


Stitches

by bilboshandkerchief



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Good Parent Din Djarin, Injury, Mando'a Language (Star Wars), Masturbation, Shameless Smut, Smut, but with context, eventually, in this ship Mando is king, no beta take me as I am, probably too many boring descriptions of injury treatment, questionable friends to lovers, then she is queen, until he needs patching up, we're going for it pals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:41:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29230158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bilboshandkerchief/pseuds/bilboshandkerchief
Summary: What is a former combat medic to do when an injured Mandalorian stumbles across her clinic one night on Klatooine?
Relationships: Din Djarin/Original Female Character(s), Din Djarin/Reader, Din Djarin/You
Comments: 96
Kudos: 279





	1. Chapter 1

6ABY, Derelkann, Klatooine.

The first time you met him, he’d been caught with a dagger laced with raquor’daan venom.

You had been locking up the side entrance to the voluntary medical center you spent your time at while on Klatooine when there was a resounding clatter. One of the many piles of discarded junk was toppled by an armored leg; equally armored arms braced by the side of the center while the imposing cut of the figure steadied himself. You could just about hear the labored pants, distorted by the modulator of his helmet; a sound familiar enough to you to know it wasn’t from exertion, but pain. Once you’d determined he wasn’t an immediate threat, weighing the possibilities as quickly as you could, you walked deeper down the alley towards the male. It was dark, the only light coming from the streetlight at the front of the clinic and that which was reflected from the man’s helmet but still you went.

“Are you hurt?” The helmet snapped around to stare at you and you immediately held up your hands, instinct screaming at you that to startle this man would be like cornering a cantankerous reek during mating season: a bad idea.

An even worse idea when you realized that your cornered reek was Mandalorian.

Even though you couldn’t see his eyes through the tinted t-visor, you could feel them on you; watching, calculating, assessing what danger you might pose all in a split second before he pushed himself from the wall with a grunt.

“This is a clinic?” He rasped, your eyes instantly following his left hand as it moved to grip above the dull grey tasset that protected his right hip. Trying to smother the pain with pressure, or stem blood loss. You couldn’t tell with his glove and the dark duraweave in the way.

“Well?” He bit out impatiently, jarring you back from trying to assess him from a safe distance.

“Oh, oh yes, yes this is one of the New Republic’s medical outreach centers in the Outer Rim. Please,” you indicated to the door for him to follow you but instead his visor tipped to the left and right marginally. You frowned; he was trying to avoid being seen. Was he wanted? After six months on Klatooine, you had learned to stop asking questions of your patients, so you said nothing. Neither did he as he walked towards the door you had been in the process of locking.

You kicked back into gear. Even though you had mentally unwound for the evening after a twelve-hour shift, you were quickly able to refocus your mind and sped up to keep pace with the Mandalorian. A task, he would probably hate to know, that wasn’t as difficult as it might have been if he was unharmed. His movements were stiff, and it was obvious that he was trying to force his body to walk fluidly despite the obvious pain it was putting him in.

The side door opened onto the main corridor that encircled a number of examination rooms, operating theatres and wards, all pointing inward so that the same power generator could be used for the entire clinic from where it sat in the center. A common feature of New Republic operations; efficient and cost effective if not always the best option. It explained why it was so dim, despite being an all-hours clinic. If they put the majority of the technological functions of the center to rest at night when it wasn’t busy, there were less fear of it being temperamental during the day. Or Maker forbid, a full power outage.

Opening the door to the closest examination room, you quickly pulled off your jacket and tossed it onto the nearest unused flat surface, pointing to the exam table in the corner, “Sit down before you fall down. A diagnostics droid will be here in---”

“No droids.” He hissed; his helmet once more twisting to glare at you even as he lowered himself heavily to sit on the table.

“No droids? Look, the quickest way---”

“You do it. I don’t want any of those things near me, got it?” His words were slurring slightly, and any argument died on your tongue when you realized trying to argue your case was just going to waste time. He was losing consciousness.

You knew you could treat him without the assistance of droids, it was more for convenience and time. But even still, you had spent four years as a combat medic for the Rebel Alliance on the frontline, you knew a thing or two about getting things done quickly.

“Belt. Tasset. Off. Now.” Was all you said as you got down to business and pulled one of the drawers to the side open. You pulled a pair of gloves on before you flicked the examination light on, the sudden glare hurting your eyes momentarily as you approached the large warrior on your table.

“Don’t make me tell you again.” You warned as you adjusted the settings on the light to focus itself to the optimum location for you to get a better look. The duraweave above his armor was dark, blood no doubt but it looked dry. You could feel your skin humming with the anxiety of not knowing what sort of injury was waiting for you underneath that gloved hand but knew better than to try to remove the armor yourself. You might not be a Siniteen, but you weren’t stupid either, to try remove a Mandalorian’s armor without permission.

You could hear the heavy exhales from him through his nose as he pointedly stared away from you, as if his sheer willpower alone would be enough to deter you from your demands.

“Fine.” You bit out and immediately slapped the hand covering his side, the added pressure making the man grunt and his hand instantly retract from the contact on instinct before growling at you in an unknown tongue.

You tuned him out as you lifted a side of the single tear in the duraweave to reveal an angry and inflamed cauterized laceration, the swelling alone telling you how botched the job was. But it was the faint black veins that were slowly growing from the point of contact that worried you. You’d seen this kind of wound before, on Sriluur. It was commonly used in gang warfare that had engulfed the planet since the fall of the Empire.

“Fucking hell, what idiot cauterizes a poisoned wound?” You muttered to yourself, feeling around the edges of the gash lightly and earning a shaky exhale from your patient.  
“Are you calling me an idiot?” The Mandalorian bit out as he turned his helmet to look down at you again, his hands fisted at the side of the table. The jolt of pain had revived him slightly.

“If you’re the one who cauterized it, then yeah. I’m surprised you haven’t already killed yourself accidentally with this level of carelessness.”

You stood before the warrior could respond but you heard his snarl through the modulator as you quickly began grabbing the supplies you’d need.

“I’m not going to tell you this won’t hurt because honestly, it’s going to massively suck. It would have been bad enough if you’d shown up with an open wound infected with raquor’daan poison, but we’re going to have to reopen yours if we want to be able to extract the poison.” You threw a sterilized scalpel into the metal pan that hovered beside you, along with gauze, several saline syringes and bactaspray before you walked back over to him.

The armored warrior said nothing and stared at you, a flash of awareness running through you suddenly; that he could so easily kill you, wounded or not.

The silence stretched for several long seconds before the Mandalorian reached down to unbuckle the utility belt around his waist unhurriedly and dropped it beside him so that it wasn’t in either of your way. It was a blatant challenge when he leaned back on his hands, his visor staying trained on you as you narrowed your gaze; the belt could come off, but the tasset stayed on.

In another situation, the act might have been almost erotic, with his fingers unbuckling the belt deliberately slow as if daring you to speak to the contrary. Silent, yet commanding your undivided attention as he made himself comfortable on the table. But alas, the man in front of you was poisoned and that tended to skew the situation away from sexy.  
You arched a single brow, picking up the scalpel as you accepted the proverbial gauntlet thrown to you.

“Buckle up, pal.”

***

You were a demon. Hell spawn sent to torment him in his dying moments, doomed to have no peace before the end.

At least, that’s what Din told himself as you set the wicked sharp blade of the scalpel against his skin. The skill with which you sliced open the recently closed wound before he could even blink was both inspiring and chilling. He didn’t know what he expected a medic on Klatooine to look like, but it certainly wasn’t you. You looked much too soft, too young but the unwavering focus in your gaze as you gently pulled the seams of the wound apart told him of an inner steel.

His inner lamentations over demonic medics and soft eyes distracted him fabulously from the pain of the wound he’d received on Sriluur while picking up a quarry up until the hellion squeezed one side of the wound, making him shout at the blend of white hot agony and surprise at which the pain came.

“Fucking hell!” he growled, shifting under your ruthless touch.

“Stop moving, Mando. The poison needs to be pulled out and since you don’t want droids we’re doing it the old fashioned way.” You didn’t raise your eyes to him, even as he glared daggers at the top of your head, a hiss of pain leaving him again as you pressed along the exposed flesh towards the edge of the wound again, his head spinning at the expelled blood, the crimson laced with inky black.

A moment of relief followed as the medic cleaned the wound with the saline solution before she wiped it down and repeated the process of squeezing the poison out followed by a clean.

“Almost there… hang in there. You’re doing great.” Din rolled his eyes behind his helmet; the generic medical praise made his stomach churn. It was obvious you had slipped into autopilot, rehashing the same comments that made most patients relax while you shifted to try get the opposite edge. This one being significantly more difficult to clean as the piece of armor that he had flatly refused to take off, was making it awkward to move around.

“Son of a druk throwing skrog!” If he wasn’t in pain, he’d have chuckled at the absolute filth coming from your mouth, putting a pirate to shame while you blew a few stray hairs that had fallen from your tie and into your face during your attempts to shift yourself to better clean the wound. As it was, he just leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling, reciting the Creed in his head to distract himself.

He couldn’t decide if you belonged fighting in a shady cantina or leading a triage camp on a battlefield. All he could determine, was that you had a mind that didn’t falter at the lack of technology or use of droids (a rarity these days), you had a mouth that’d make even Paz Vizsla blush and the spine to tell a Mandalorian to remove his armor without the least bit of hesitation. In a word; you were dangerous, and Din never saw the need to experience more danger than he already did, thank you very much.

He tilted his head when he heard you release a breath and sit back on your haunches, running the back of your hand across your forehead, eyes bright as they looked at your work. In what Din could only explain as being delusions brought on by overexposure to raquor’daan venom, a moment of attraction flashed in his mind, kindled when you looked back up at him before he wrangled the feeling away.

Dangerous. Definitely dangerous, he warned himself heatedly.

***

You let out a sigh of relief when the blood from the Mandalorians wound ran clean. It wasn’t a definitive answer to whether you had gotten all the raquor’daan venom out, but it was the majority. At least now you could sleep easy knowing some bactaspray would be able to handle the rest.

You rinsed the wound once more with saline and dried it gently with a clean pad before spraying it generously with the bacta.

“Now then, at least I can say a Mandalorian didn’t die on my watch.” You commented cheerfully, your more easy-going side surfacing now that the immediate danger had been dealt with.

The warrior was silent above you as he watched you peel open a bactapad to cover the wound for extra protection.

“Don’t cauterize it again until you’ve given the bacta at least eight hours with direct contact. That should kill off any of the poison I may have missed and will keep it sterile.” Pushed yourself to your feet, pulling off the stained gloves and throwing them into the pan to be disposed along with all the soiled gauze and pads you had used.

“You’re looking for light pink at the edges.” You told him as you continued to clear up your supplies, “If it’s still angry and swollen at the edges after twenty-four hours you’ll need to return to a medical facility. But I’ll throw in some antibiotics, so you hopefully don’t have to, raquor’daan venom is potent after all. I wouldn’t take any chances if you’re going to say you think it’s overkill.”

You smiled as he lowered his hand, having risen it to interrupt you, no doubt. You could hear him grumble a bit while he pulled his belt back around his waist, grunting softly as the weight settled on his hip.

“How does it feel?” You probed from the sink, turning your head to look at him as you washed your hands.

“Better.” Was all you got from him but from what you could tell, he was a man of few words anyway.

You nodded and turned back to turn off the tap and started measuring out three days of antibiotics, keeping him in your peripheral as you saw him get to his feet, rolling his shoulders back and turning to look at you.

“Thank you. I appreciate the help.” He rasped awkwardly, obviously not accustomed to actually being helped in these kinds of situations. He fished out a pouch of credits when you approached him to hand him the antibiotics, causing you to frown.

“These medical centers were set up to offer free medical care to those that need it.” You mentioned as you moved out of his way to lean against the table he had been sitting on not five minutes prior.

“I… can only offer you my gratitude then.” He said, nodding to you once more before heading towards the door.

“One more thing Mando.” You called as he opened the door, the beskar helmet turning slightly to indicate he was listening,

“Try not to get yourself killed by accidentally sealing venom into your body again, yeah?”

You laughed at the indignant snort that left the man as he left without a word, his voice trailing back as he walked away,

“If I do, I know where to go.”

And with that, he disappeared back the way he came, no indication that one of the fiercest warriors in the galaxy had even been in your examination room.

He was like a tornado, arriving and disappearing in a flash, the wreckage left behind not immediately obvious but when you would look back in the years to come, you’d laugh at how naïve you had been to think you could assist a Mandalorian and still remain an insignificant player on the grand stage of the galaxy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> djarinsbeskar.tumblr.com
> 
> So, too much? Not enough? Throw it in the bin possibly?
> 
> I've had this brainchild wrecking havoc on my mind for the last few months and have decided to put pen to paper. In all honesty, this is meant to be shameless smut but I love context and world building and OCs so I felt the need to warm up with a few prologue chapters before we get to Din-ner eheh. I hope that is not disappointing, but I'll be trying to keep the plot's integrity even as it shifts focus to all those Din cravings we can't seem to shake!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We've got to stop meeting like this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 is here! First and foremost, can I just say thank you so much for the reception Part 1 received and to those who reviewed?? I don’t know how to react??? I’m so touched??????? It’s so motivating and has reminded me why I love sharing my scribbles!
> 
> There’s a greater focus on world/character building in this chapter so if it feels a bit rambling or description heavy, I do apologise! Like I said, I’m trying to build some context to the reader-insert before we get to the smut, and I hope that I’ve kept her general enough that she doesn’t cross the line too much into OC territory and becomes unrelatable to readers. As always, constructive criticism is welcome! I'll admit, I struggled with the flow of this chapter slightly, but I hope it's not too distracting or disjointed. My style of writing leaves much to be desired so I would love to know if something doesn’t make sense so I can improve and fix it. But enough of that, on with the show!

_**8 ABY, Mynock, Dandoran.** _

The second time you met him, he had dislocated his shoulder after a nasty clash with a Houk.

Your dealing with the Mandalorian on Klatooine had moved to the back of your mind and you rarely, if ever thought about it. I was merely another encounter with a rough character that needed some medical attention. You wouldn’t have been able to hazard a guess at how many similar characters you saw in a week while you worked at the clinic. Even more so when you’d left Klatooine after becoming disillusioned that the New Republic were actually trying to make a difference.

You had heard stories from the Core and Mid Rim planets. Stories of the investment and progress being made to rebuild after the tyranny of the Empire, of the billions of credits being poured into the development of new ship building centers on Corellia and large, extravagant residencies for government members on Coruscant. Things, you were sure, that were not actually urgent necessities as they were desires. Especially given that the funds you received from that same government to sustain the clinic thinned before drying up completely a few months after your encounter with the Mandalorian.

_…Hemorrhaging more credits than is justified for the benefits we’re seeing in return._

The busybody politician with a colorful title and even more colorful robes waxed poetically, hiding the sentiment of disinterest in ways only a politician could. Half-heartedly trying to distract you by his explanations with empty praise and gratitude for your service during the Rebellion and your humanitarian work now, _a true embodiment of what the New Republic stands for._ He crowed like the colorful bird he looked like, dressed as he was with fine feathers lining the lapels of his robes.

You bristle at the memory of the hologram’s eyes flickering to look at anything besides you, running down the time you had spent weeks trying to get.

That was when the memory of the Mandalorian surfaced, surprisingly. How the day after you treated him you arrived at the medical center and saw a familiar pouch of credits sitting innocently behind the check-in desk. When you enquired with the receptionist, she told you it was sitting there once she opened up earlier that morning. The only note left being on one of the datapads behind the desk, the scrawling font reading; _to help with your work_. You had let out a chuckle to yourself as you checked your schedule, wondering if the brutish male you had treated last night really was as cold as he portrayed himself to be.

The memory had incited a righteous anger that a bounty hunter was more willing to support a voluntary clinic than the government that set it up in the first place was.

_I thought the Empire were the ones who put a credit limit on what a life is worth._ You had hissed in return, interrupting what you were sure was a well-rehearsed and well used speech, before hanging up. You pressed the heel of your hands into your eyes, taking a shuddering breath as you tried not to be nihilistic in thinking that you had spent nearly half your life thinking you could make a difference, when, you were just serving the Empire in different clothing.

It wasn’t a fair comparison; you knew the New Republic was neither as cruel nor as tyrannical and oppressive as it’s predecessor, but you had been made so dreadfully aware that in places like the Outer Rim, people would always be overlooked by those in power because they simply didn’t offer enough to be worth looking at.

The realization was a raw wound to your soul. You had lost brothers and friends to the fight for liberation, but it didn’t seem as though the grass was much greener on the other side. Maybe elsewhere in the galaxy it was, but where you were needed most, the grass was dehydrated and dying under the relentless sun.

With the clinic penniless, your meagre pension from the Rebellion was not nearly enough to keep it functioning. Add to that the reluctance of the other medics to run the clinic alongside you out of their own pocket and the intergalactic beacon for medical aid that alerted anyone in the parsec of where to go being disengaged, traffic stopped. The native Klatooinians preferred their own healers and very rarely, if ever, sought out medics from the New Republic.

For the first time in your life, your path wasn’t clear. If you even had a path anymore.

That was how you found yourself on Dandoran, flying off a week after the last of the medics left Derelkann to the first planet that was habitable to humans. But by the Maker, it was even rougher than Klatooine. The temperate climate and lush greenery were more comfortable for you, but the city you found yourself in, Mynock, was to say the least, undesirable. Having once been Hutt Space, there were still several illegal operations active that kept the city going and you learned early on what areas to avoid and to always carry a blaster with you. But at least where there was activity, there was work for you.

***

You met Biran Sonter the very day you arrived, asking directions to the nearest medical facility, hoping they could use another medic. He was an elderly Mirialan male with a wealth of history behind him, his facial tattoos creased with deep wrinkles and a kindly smile that reminded you of your grandfather.

You were flabbergasted to learn that during the time of the Galactic Republic, he acted as the royal physician to the palace on Naboo.

As you choked on the tea he had kindly made for you at that revelation, you couldn’t ask him quickly enough how he ended up here? On an Outer Rim backwater skughole of a planet and his tale had been sobering. When the Republic first fell, anyone who did not immediately surrender to the rising Empire was terminated. Biran had, at the time, only heard word of the death of the beloved former Queen Amidala and blamed the Empire vehemently. Escaping on one of the last shuttles from the Mid Rim planet before legions of clones descended, he arrived on Dandoran where no one, not even the Hutts cared enough to notice him. All they knew, was that he was an excellent doctor who charged little for his services and kept to himself. That was good enough for them. While he treated a vast number of criminals ranging from thieves to bounty hunters, he was not wholly merciful. He somehow managed to avoid or talk his way out of treating anyone in the organized crime syndicates or known traffickers and killers. It may have gone against a physician’s code to do ones best to save every life, but he like many, made their own code in the Outer Rim.

You fell into a fast and easy friendship with the Mirialan after that, your similar histories of working in the medical field despite being decades apart giving you plenty to talk about. The practice Biran ran in Mynock was always busy and he was only too grateful when you offered to take the weight off his old shoulders and gradually, his clients began to expect to see you most of the day and Biran for a few hours in the early morning. You were never short on work between cantina brawls, accidents and the downright attacks that took place in Mynock and the next eighteen standard months seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, Klatooine a distant memory, as was the Mandalorian you met there.

***

The night you saw him again, was no different to any other you spent enjoying a quiet drink before heading back to turn in for the night.

You had been in the process of leaving the cantina, recognizing that the later it grew, the rowdier and aggressive the clientele became. You could handle yourself as well as anyone who made their home in Hutt Space, but you knew better than to be blatantly reckless when you were on your own. It wasn’t like you had the squadron you stayed with throughout the Rebellion for backup as you once did, and your closest ally would probably break in half if you pushed him too hard. So no, you were not staying late with Mynocks newest resident of a Houk warlord and the company he seemed to attract.

The Houk in question was a cruel and belligerent brute, a former local warlord by the name of Gappo Teff. His reputation for inflicting punishment disproportionate to any slight committed against him or the Empire was one of the many echoes of the former imperial rule that was still being felt in the galaxy nearly three years after its collapse.

The stories of the chokehold he held over Sullust would make even a hardened soldier’s stomach churn. How he managed to escape the liberation of the planet without being dragged to the noxious surface of Sullust to suffer for the pain he had caused so many, was a mystery. But there he was, sitting like a king in the cantina you found yourself in, bellowing laughter ricocheting obnoxiously throughout the space, not a care in the world that he was a wanted felon. 

It might have been to do with the fact that he was at least seven and a half foot tall, with a mass that could easily fit three of you side by side across him and still not be seen. It might have been to do with the cold, milky blue of his small eyes, sunk into a skull so large it could probably shatter ribs and rupture organs if one were to be headbutted with it. The last thing anyone wanted was those eyes focusing on them. It could have been the heavy artillery modified blaster he kept laying on his lap; the weapon more of a cannon for those of a more regular stature. Whatever the reason, very few bounty hunters and even fewer New Republic guards came to collect him. He was probably one of the most easily found quarries on all Guild registers and New Republic wanted lists and yet, he languished in Mynock as if the Empire had never fallen and his reign was still assured.

Making your way to the entrance, you came up short as someone walked in, your nose coming abruptly close to a reddish-brown durasteel chest-plate. Taking a step back, your eyes did a double take at the familiar unpainted beskar helmet. Subconsciously, you had stepped to the side, the Mandalorian continuing to walk without a word as if you hadn’t nearly walked into him. Mandalorians were a rare sight these days, so you could be forgiven for staring. Though, you were most likely staring for entirely different reasons compared to everyone else in the cantina.

The armor was the same, if not a bit more worn, as was the dark boiled woolen cape and pulse rifle strapped to his back. But it was the gait; how could someone walk both gracefully and arrogantly, almost cocky in his self-assurance that he was in control wherever he went. It explained why he was so determined not to let his injury be known by his walk the last time you saw him. Because you had seen him before, there was no doubt in your mind that this was the same irritable reek of a Mandalorian you met in Derelkann years ago.

He stood in the middle of the cantina, assessing the place as his helmet scanned the area. If you didn’t know any better, you say he was…

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me.” You muttered to yourself when the helmet stopped on Teff. When you said bounty hunters didn’t bother to come after him, you should have been more specific. _Smart_ bounty hunters didn’t bother hunting Gappo Teff, which explained why the one you knew of was right there looking for him.

A choice lay before you. Leave now and lock your doors until morning… or wait. For what, you couldn’t be sure. But if the Mandalorian wasn’t killed tonight by Teff, he was going to wish he was with the injuries he would probably sustain.

You let your head fall back on your shoulders as you exhaled. Why were you so soft for lost causes and wayward souls?

***

The Houks bodyguards left much to be desired, crumbling to the ground before they had even drawn their blasters, smoke rising from the blaster wounds inflicted effortlessly by Din.

The bodyguards weren’t what worried Din. Their boss hardly needed protecting, and he wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

The groan and screech of the metal table being shoved away by Teff as he stood to his full height made Din grit his teeth, arms open as he boomed, “Ah Mando, I was wondering when you’d try your luck at me. Your reputation is becoming rather infamous throughout the parsec.”

A guttural, wet laugh left the purple skinned quarry as Din remained silent and kept his blaster aimed. Damn, but the piece of bantha crap was big. He quickly scanned his peripheral, but it seemed the residents of Mynock had more self-interest than to trade blaster fire over one warlord, the barkeep casually making his was into the backroom of the bar to keep out of harms way.

“Why don’t you hang up that Guild work and let me make you a better offer.” Teff boomed, taking a swing of his drink, streams of the yellow fluid running down the sides of him mouth as those frosty eyes stayed trained on the bounty hunter.

Din rolled his eyes behind his helmet; negotiations by the quarry were his least favorite reaction to being caught but he knew better than to think he had captured the colossal male yet. Until Teff was either dead or frozen in carbonite, he was a danger. Luckily, the orders were to bring him in dead or alive. Seems the New Republic were fed up with him still breathing. He couldn’t say he blamed them.

“No?” the Houk pushed when Din didn’t respond, “Too bad, you’d have made an excellent addition to my collection.” And with more speed than Din had anticipated from the large male, he charged.

***

You had the good sense to leave the cantina as soon as the first blaster shot was fired, pulling the hood of your dusty grey jacket over your head while you made your way back to the practice to gather a few things. Things that would be completely obsolete if he died but you wouldn’t think that far. You were a realist, not a pessimist. The Houk might have had the advantage of height and sheer strength, but the Mandalorian was quicker, possibly smarter, and decked with enough firepower to make a starfighter pilot drool.

So, you put the odds about sixty forty in favor of the Mandalorian. Not that you would ever tell him that.

***

Teff roared in anger as Din rolled out of the way again, shooting his grappling hook to latch onto the Houks shoulder and yanked hard enough to throw the male off balance. Despite his large size however, Teff was able to slide his foot back to catch himself, putting him in direct line with Din.

He was on his feet in no time as the Houk charged at him, lowering his head so that on contact, Din’s left shoulder was thrown back into the wall of the cantina. His breath left him as the impact winded him, a dull but growing pain throbbing from his shoulder before Teff’s vile breath permeated even his helmet and a large hand wrapped around Din’s throat. He could feel his feet leave the floor and the weight of his body pulling downward made the pressure on his windpipe all the heavier.

“Oh well, at least you tried.” Teff gloated, his head leaning closer as if to peer into the visor and that distraction was all Din needed to lift his hand and engage his flamethrower, engulfing the Houk in flames. Din gasped in a breath when he was dropped, the squeals of pain coming from Teff disconcerting as he staggered around the cantina, desperately looking for something to extinguish the inferno his clothing and more vulnerable tissue had become.

Din waited a few more measured breaths before lifting the blaster and shooting the quarry in the vulnerable side of the neck, satisfied with the resounding bang the body made as it fell to the ground, flames still burning bright until he picked up the half-drunk tankard on Teffs table to douse the fire lest he be completely unrecognizable upon delivery.

Din looked around, the cantina was empty; the silence suddenly deafening as he looked back down at the body.

Now, how to get him back to the _Razor Crest._

Din sighed.

***

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

You held up your hands unsurprised when the Mandalorian spun on the ramp of his ship, blaster raised and aimed right at you. He tilted his head slightly, taking you in and you tried not to fidget under the gaze you could feel raking over you despite not being able to see his eyes. What you could see though, was how limp his left arm was hanging to his side.

“The demon medic from Klatooine.” He muttered, finally placing your face and lowering his blaster slowly while you lowered your arms.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” You snorted before nodding to his arm, “And you’ll probably be calling me a lot worse when I tell you that that arm needs tending to.”

He shifted slightly, turning his body so you wouldn’t be able to see. You just crossed your arms across your chest and stared at him pointedly. He held your gaze and was still as a statue. You could play the silence game too if that was how he wanted to do this. It was only a matter of time before one of you broke and you weren’t the one with a dislocated shoulder, so you’d say that the odds were in your favor.

It seemed like time dragged on before, without saying anything, the Mandalorian sighed and turned towards the ship.

You bit down on a smile, but you could still feel it creeping upon your lips as you congratulated yourself on winning. Two nil, you tallied in your head, not bad girl.

The ship… well the ship was a fossil and that was being generous. But it was clean and obviously well taken of, if the tidy hull was anything to go by.

Apart from the charred corpse lying in the middle of course, but those were just details. Easily overlooked. The _smell_ however… that was a different story, but you held back any comments. You still couldn’t fathom how he’d managed to drag a fully grown Houk through the town one-handed, but then you knew that the strength and discipline of the Mandalorians was unrivalled. He could have done it through sheer determination and honestly, you were lucky to have found him at all. But people in Mynock liked to talk, so following the rumors' had let you there relatively easy.

A sigh broke your train of thought, “Let’s get this over with.”

The warrior seemed resigned to his fate as he stepped over the corpse and you followed suit, mind instantly running through the correct procedure and treatment.

“We have to get the bone in the upper arm into the correct position before it slips back into joint, otherwise the force will just break your arm.” You explained as you moved to stand in front of the large warrior when he sat back on one of the many crates pushed against the wall of the ship. You could barely hear the short exhales coming from the modulator and you could only guess that he was holding back speaking, whether in pain or frustration that you had strong-armed him into accepting treatment again.

“But hey, look on the bright side.”

His visor tilted slightly to look at you.

“No droids needed.” You shrugged a shoulder and sent him a grin when he said nothing. When he looked away, you focused your attention back on the problem shoulder; it wasn’t immediately clear that it had been dislocated, the pauldron he wore hiding the jutting ball of the joint that was no doubt pressed uncomfortably against his flesh. What you could see was that his left side was hanging just a bit lower than his right, and the inability to move the arm was a dead giveaway.

“Are you just going to stare at it or actually do what you said you would when you barged onto my ship?” The rasp was closer to you as he turned his head, the rumble of his voice decidedly deeper than you remembered last time. Or perhaps it always had been, and you just hadn’t been paying enough attention, more focused on the very real threat of having a dead body on your hands as the poison spread. You rolled your eyes; or it was all the short and biting commands he only seemed to know how to give as opposed to actually speaking that made you forget the voice. The man could be attractive, if he wasn’t so frustrating.

“I can’t see it properly.” You replied, agitated with him again. He got under your skin too easily, and ruined your cool demeanor.

“You dealt with the problem just fine before.” He snapped back, pain making him cranky.

“You didn’t have a bone out of place last time!” You stopped yourself, sucking in a breath before releasing it to prevent yourself from snapping again.

“At least,” you bartered, “let me remove the pauldron. I can feel around the duraweave to get an idea. I won’t see any more of you than I did last time.”

He didn’t say anything again for a time and honestly, he was the slowest person you’d ever met at receiving emergency medical care. Half the men you treated during the Rebellion would yell until you’d taken care of the worst of their injuries before they even considered if it was what they wanted or not.

“Fine.” Was all he responded, making no move to remove the offending piece so you took that as your cue to feel around the curved metal cautiously, feeling where it attached to his duraweave and releasing it into your hands before placing it down on a separate crate.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” A warning growl echoed in the hull, turning you back to your task with a hum.

It seemed the joint had popped forward, no doubt from caving in as Teff collided with Mando’s shoulder. You leaned forward, your fingers feeling around the area as gently as you could while his breathing came out a little shorter. You sent him an apologetic smile.

“I’m going to have to ask you to stay still, okay? Usually I’d have someone to hold—”

“I can keep myself still, just do it.” He snapped finally, turning to look at you before he looked away again. You said nothing more as you took his gloved hand in yours, turning the forearm over and feeling the hand clench in yours when he hissed.

“Shh, nearly there.” You soothed, moving your hand under his elbow to lift it so it was aligned with Mando’s shoulder. You stood, keeping the arm in place and twisting yourself to stand facing his side.

***

You were definitely out to get him. There was no other explanation for why he only seemed to be seriously injured in your presence. Din tried to tell himself he was being over-dramatic and irrational, that you hadn’t even been on the same planet when he was injured the first time, but then you opened your mouth and he felt justified in his petulant thoughts.

“On three.” He heard you warn and all he could offer was a single nod; the sooner he got this over with the better.

“One…” You jerked the arm forward and slipped the joint back into place quickly with a sickening crack and searing pain took his breath away before it began to ebb immediately.

“DANK…. FERRICK!” Din yelled as his good arm reached across to grip his left, bending forward as he breathed through the flash of pain. You moved out of his way, waiting for him to look back up at you through the helmet, deep pants making his chest heave. You cocked your head to the side when his eyes found yours, a clear question there.

He groaned as he sat back, leaning his head against the hull, “It… doesn’t hurt as much anymore.” He admitted, thinking that the smile you gave him was somewhat worth the knock to his ego at having to admit such a thing in the first place. And like last time, before he could even worry about the concerning direction that thought had led to, you were fluttering about opening crates and bins as if you owned the place.

“What the hell—” he made to stand indignantly.

“Do you have any spare cloth?” You interrupted, “Your arm needs to be bound for a few days. If you have bacta it might reduce the healing time a bit but honestly, I don’t think dislocations can be rushed despite recent studies. Rushing back to heavily lifting or activity for at least six weeks is a sure way to hurt yourself again.”

You were rambling now as you set a pile of disused yet clean cloth you found on your lap, sitting across from him as he just blinked at this enigma of a woman. Giving him orders in his own ship, were you daft?

Your eyes sharpened and shot to his and he was suddenly glad you couldn’t see behind his mask. His eyes had widened guiltily at the thought that you had read his mind.

“You will do what you’re told, understand Mando?” You warned as your fingers tied a loose sling from strips of cloth you’d pulled apart without even having to look at it, deft fingers looping the material and strengthening it with several more layers woven in for good measure.

“If you insist on getting injured so often, you live with the consequences. And the consequences are doing what you’re fucking told and being happy about it, got it? Sulk if you want, so long as you keep the arm bound and don’t take on any jobs for at least two months.”

He opened his mouth a few times at the audacity, did she have a death wish? He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had spoken to him as if he were no more than a child and it made his blood boil. But just as quickly as the anger arose, it simmered as she muttered while watching her fingers tie off the sling,

“You don’t actually seem like a bad guy, and the galaxy can’t afford to lose anymore… not bad guys.” She seemed unsure of giving out even this level of praise but then again, she only had their first encounter to go by.

He grunted; not sure how to respond. And when Din was uncomfortable, he resorted to silence.

You got to your feet once the sling was suitably strong enough to support the weight of his arm without unravelling or breaking and you indicated to him, “May I?”

He jerked his head up in affirmation and you maneuvered the sling to sit correctly under his elbow and forearm, coaxing him to lift it slightly with a tap before you looped the tied end over his helmet, adjusting the length slightly to fit against him.

“You left Klatooine.” the statement rose from the warrior, his tone quieter than you’d heard him all day. Was he... trying to make conversation? Din told himself that it was merely out of curiosity from seeing you by chance on two totally different planets.

Blinking in surprise, you sat back on the crate in front of him, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back on one of your hands, “New Republic stopped funding the clinic and I realized that they’re all the same when it comes to the Outer Rim.”

He snorted in agreement, honestly, he wasn’t surprised to hear the New Republic had cut their losses on charity. It wasn’t in their nature to funnel money away from the Core planets.

“But it’s not all bad,” you continued, “I work with a doctor here. He’s old now so he should be enjoying his retirement. I’m kept busy and…”

He watched you while he waited for you to finish, surely there was more? But when you just shrugged and sent him a tight smile, he felt an uncomfortable niggle at the back of his neck, a familiarity that made him almost want to smile back even if you couldn’t see it. _Almost._ But not quite. He was unnerved at the… _empathy_ he had for your situation. He too just… kept busy. It wasn’t towards any end beyond supporting the covert and the foundlings there. But for himself, he just kept working towards some translucent, non-existent goal, one job ended, and another began.

Something in your eyes told him you were doing the exact same thing. It unnerved him to think about.

“Echoy’la…” the word left him without knowing and you blinked,

“Hm?”

He shook his head and stood, grunting a bit at the ache in his shoulder when it jostled a bit, “Nothing. It seems I owe you my thanks again, demon medic.”

“I do have a name you know.” You snorted, letting the previous topic go as it seemed to just make him more awkward and grumpy than he already was. You packed away the medikit and replaced the unused cloth back where you found it.

“Somehow I don’t think it’ll be as fitting.”

“Whatever, sunshine.” You looked over your shoulder at him, the sling looking so out of place as he hooked a thumb in the utility belt he wore. It was amazing that he could still look as intimidating as he did. You gathered your things and started down the ramp leisurely. He followed you silently until he was standing at the entrance to the ship.

“Demon or not… thank you.” He called out as your feet hit the dusty ground of Mynock once again. You looked back over your shoulder and gave a single wave, calling something back to him that did make him smile behind his helmet this time.

As you disappeared into the streets of Mynock, he tested the name you had thrown back to him, rolling the syllables, and testing the vowels as he repeated it to himself.

Pity, he thought. He hated being wrong about anything, but somehow, your name was a much better fit than demon medic.

Not that he would ever admit that to you, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando'a Translation:  
> Echoy'la - Lost
> 
> djarinsbeskar.tumblr.com


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so overwhelmed by the reception and wonderful comments this story has been given and have to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I hope I can continue to meet your expectations even if we're still in the middle of the prologue.
> 
> I struggled a little bit with the pacing of this chapter, I'll be honest. And I'd really appreciate any feedback if it doesn't read as well as the first two chapters or doesn't make sense or is boring etc. etc. That being said, I love writing these two so I hope you all can continue to enjoy my nonsence!
> 
> This is the penultimate prologue chapter, with the story very much shifting to surround the dynamic and growth of the readers relationship with Din so if you can hold out for me just a bit longer, I promise, I'll make it worth the wait. You know what I'm talking about friends.

**_9 ABY, on the Hydian Way._ **

Din prided himself on the strength of his principles. An unwavering certainty in everything he did that gave him a modicum of peace as he wandered throughout the galaxy amidst wars, rebellions and the chaos that ensued in their aftermath.

He was certain when he took the Creed, when he sacrificed a future for himself in service of the covert; something he had never regretted to this day. He had never regretted any bounty taken; unmoved by pleas, promises or threats. Neither tears nor anger could sway his resolve.

Truly, he could count on one hand the things he regretted in life; the job on Alzoc III, challenging a fully grown Mandalorian to a fight while still a hot blooded, angry teenager, and not trying to pull his parents into the bunker where they had hidden him from Separatist droids as Aq Vertina was invaded.

In his line of work, there was seldom room for self-doubt. Inner conflict led to hesitation, which could be a death sentence for a bounty hunter.

And yet, as he came out of hyperspace, that unfamiliar gnawing presence in the pit of his stomach began to rear its’ head again. The job he had accepted was… dubious, to say the least.

Din snorted in self-deprecation; most of his jobs were dubious in nature.

What brought on this unnatural doubt, however, was that this was a job for Imperial remnants. Din wasn’t a fool; he knew half the jobs he had taken in the past could have been traced to the Imps if he cared enough to look, but taking a job from them personally… well, he didn’t know how to feel about that just yet.

He pondered the feeling in his stomach again and frowned. Was it doubt… or instinct? Instinct was his most trusted companion as he travelled through space alone. A tickle at the back of his neck, a wary step forward, even a flash of electricity down his spine; those were only some of the ways that instinct spoke to him. And he always listened.

An uncomfortable feeling in his stomach though? Never that.

If it was instinct, then he was going against his very nature in ignoring it. If it was doubt, based on some misguided sense of morality in dealing with the empire… that he could deal with. He could smother doubt with control and consistency; going through the motions of a job brought security and familiarity. Sooner or later, that doubt would make way for a stoic acceptance, a state that had gotten Din through some of his roughest years.

His eyes were drawn to his shoulder, where the glint of newly crafted beskar shone in the gentle lights of the cockpit.

A down-payment…

“Makers Helmet…” he groaned, running a gloved thumb and forefinger across his tired eyes to pinch the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on as the pressure at the back of his skull increased due to the loop his thoughts were going in.

A job was a job. He circled back to his original thought that had led him to accept the clients offer. A job with a bounty greater than anything he could have ever hoped to receive in his lifetime, let alone in one go. It was mere sentimentality and conscience getting in the way of good business. That beskar could not only provide him with armor to reaffirm his loyalty to the covert, but assistance and support to the foundlings and those who raised them.

His resolved steeled. He had never regretted putting the covert before himself, and he wasn’t about to start now.

Turning his attention back to the navicomputer, he scanned the co-ordinates that his most recent lead had pointed to. He had hunted the trail of his latest bounty to the general direction of a vast area of space that straddled the outer reaches of the Outer Rim and halted as it reached Wild Space. There was nothing to stop the bounty from being in those unexplored parts of the galaxy, and if the tracking beacon led him that far, he would have to be ready. With no spaceport on any of the planets he had seen dotting the area on the navicomputer, he thought it wise to refuel and gather provisions should he be there for any prolonged period.

As he lazily assessed which planet to land on, his eyes were drawn to a familiar name. A memory brushed against his thoughts. Not necessarily a pleasant one, but not entirely unpleasant either. For the sake of fairness, Din scanned the planets surrounding the one he pondered; some were equally as well equipped for his needs but the majority he had not been on in years if ever. Somewhere he knew, even briefly, gave him more comfort than the unknown.

At least, that was what Din told himself as he punched in the co-ordinates of Dandoran, the flicker of warmth the memory brought him was something equally as unnatural as the doubt coiled in his stomach.

Bantha balls, maybe he had been poisoned again...

***

Din tossed a few credits to the human female who received the _Razor Crest_ into the hanger she was managing.

“She needs to be refueled.” Was all he said as he made his way out of the hanger and into the not unfamiliar streets of Mynock. It didn’t look like much had changed in the several months since he was here last; the place was still crawling with a mixture of criminals, bounty hunters and people who just didn’t want to be found. All in all, a good example of most Outer Rim cities.

Mynock had two main pedestrian streets that ran for over two klicks and intersected at the middle. From what he could tell, all legitimate business ran from those two streets, the further into the alleyways and twisted lanes that branched off those two streets one ventured, the seedier the business.

From what he knew, the practice you worked at was on one of these main streets. He paused, causing a few disgruntled pedestrians to have to jerk to a halt and make their way around his imposing frame. He was not here socially. He was never _anywhere_ socially. He shook his head; between self-doubt and sentimentality, the tight leash he usually kept himself on was looser than he remembered and he had no idea just when it had started to slack.

That could not continue. But being aware of a problem allowed him to deal with it. So, with a greater sense of fortitude, he mentally choked any distracting feelings beyond the determination to collect this bounty. That included the somewhat interesting possibility of seeing you again.

Thankfully, Din only needed to stick to the main streets. The road was flanked by stall upon stall of foodstuffs, clothing, trinkets, ammunition and what looked to be a husbandry of Massiff dogs. The large, reflective eyes turned to the Mandalorian; all bared fangs and hostile snarls. An understandable response by most non-sentients when a Mandalorian had no real physical cues they could read, being as covered as they were. Until he lifted his hand for the one closest to sniff, they could only assume he was a threat.

A sniff was usually all it took however, before the snarling stopped. Din brushed a hand over the scaly head as he continued on his way to collect what he came here for.

***

An hour later, and Din was feeling much more at ease as he picked up the last of the supplies he thought he may need; ration packs, bactapads, generic ammunition that he liked to keep well stocked on the ship and so on. He was once more mentally compiling the information he had gathered on the location of the bounty, running through various routes in his mind that would cover the most planets in the parsec in the shortest amount of time.

He nodded his thanks at the change the Rhodian merchant returned to him and began to make his way back to the _Razor Crest._ If it hadn’t been for the long flick of your hair in the tie you kept it up in when you turned your head to look at someone at a stall across the central walkway of the street, Din was certain he’d have walked on none the wiser. But alas, that same higher power that had gifted him with a keep perception of his surroundings cursed him in the same fell swoop as the movement attracted his attention.

He came up short, running a mental check on himself immediately. No, no injuries. His shoulder still ached on occasion from being dislocated six months earlier, but it was a phantom pain at most these days. He was fit as a mythosaur and he wasn’t about to have that good streak ruined by getting injured in your presence… _again._

Din wondered if he could escape to his ship without you noticing; he didn’t want to tempt fate anymore than he already had. Plus, awkward interactions that left him feeling frustrated both mentally and physically were not high on the list of things he enjoyed, thank you very much.

As a Mandalorian, Din expected attention wherever he went. It was just something he chalked down to being a necessary evil to live by his Creed but he had never wanted to be more invisible than he did in that moment, thinking that at any moment he would be trip into a sarlacc pit or something equally unpleasant.

But you hadn’t seen him, thankfully; much more invested in the choices at the fishmonger’s stall.

Despite his better judgement however, he paused from slipping back to his ship silently.

He was taken by the slight pink flush that rose to your cheeks at something the woman behind the stall said, intrigued by the color and what caused it. Din tilted his head slightly. He had noticed you getting flushed in frustration or annoyance both times you had treated him. It was fascinating to see your cheeks flush for a reason other than irritation and anger.

That particular thought touched a dangerous part of Din’s mind, a part that made him wander into the realm of curiosity to ponder what else might make you blush like that.

Oh, but it was a delightful color on you, and he watched longer than he ought to, a small quirk lifting the corner of his lips. The image of domesticity as you adjusted the parcels of food already in your arms to accept the fish was so foreign to his eyes and certainly not one he ever associated with you until now. It spoke to a part of him that still slumbered but began to fidget in its sleep, on the verge of consciousness.

That tentative smile that he had unwittingly been giving into as he indulged his senses by watching you, dropped the moment three males approached you. The Twi’lek was standing too close for you to be comfortable and by the rigidity of your spine, he knew you were not.

You had taken a step away from the men easily, your body language read cautious but not fearful and he knew better than to underestimate your abilities to wrangle men into whatever position you wanted them in. He had first-hand experience in that department and honestly, it wasn’t nearly as fun as it sounded in his head.

Din relaxed the grip he had unknowingly tightened on the blaster at his hip when you made to leave the stall, away from the three. He shook his head at himself; you had lived here for years. You knew how to handle yourself perfectly fine.

Letting out a breath, he was about to continue back to the ship when that same cursed perception caught the Twi’leks arm shoot out to grip your upper arm tightly, preventing your exit.

Din was behind you before he even realised he had moved.

***

You examined the range of fish on offer, eyes skeptically crossing off anything that looked like it had been sitting out too long or anything with more than four eyes. You weren’t squeamish by nature, but the fewer dead eyes that were staring at you while you prepared dinner, the better.

One of the few perks of Mynock, was its proximity to the Great Basin of Dandoran that opened out to one of the many oceans to cover the planet. Fresh seafood was a staple in the city and after years of ration packs between the Rebellion and Klatooine, eating fresh was a luxury you would never take for granted again. Your own home planet was mostly covered in water too; the greater population spread over countless clusters of islands where seafood was also the meal of choice for most. It was a tenuous connection but being able to cook dishes somewhat like the ones your mother made when you and your brothers were younger made it feel like you weren’t so far away.

You smiled to yourself at the thought as you pointed to the light blue colored Berbersian crabs, knowing the trawlers had come in only this morning that carried them. The claws were meaty with the slightest sweetness to their flavor that complimented most dishes. Not to mention that when cooked, they turned the most vibrant blue that their shells alone could be used for decoration and craft.

You chatted aimlessly with the fishmonger as she cleaned and prepared the translucent peachy pink fish you had also chosen for good measure.

“Busy at Biran’s?”

“When are we not busy?”

“It’s all them fights between the gangs. Folk say since the Hutts were chased out that things are better but it’s even more dangerous with the others tryin’ to take their place.”

You only gave a non-committal hum to that; you didn’t get involved in politics of any kind. Gang or otherwise.

The mindless chatter continued on nonetheless to more safe topics.

“Did I tell ye, Drea had her baby not three days ago. Another girl.”

“Poor Nej will have his hands full when they all get older.”

“I’m sure they’re dying for a boy at this point. Great excuse to keep sowin’ the crops though, ain’t it?”

“I’m sure they don’t need any excu—”

“Ever think of havin’ any of yer own? Yer well into that time of yer life, I’d say no?”

You blinked, nearly missing the bag of produce as she handed it across the stall to you. You could feel your face heat up at the direction this conversation had turned, and you definitely never thought you would be discussing your biological clock with a fishmonger over Berbersian crab.

“Well I---”

Movement from the corner of your eye stole your attention from that progressively awkward conversation and the no doubt insufficient answer you would have given as three males came to stand at the same stall, facing you. Your eyes scanned the trio sideways, not prepared to give them your attention unless it became unavoidable. There were two humans and a Twi’lek and given the way the humans flanked the large blue male; you had a fair idea about who was in charge as he sneered at you in what you assumed was meant to be a disarming smile.

The blasters at each of their hips and the emerald green coloring on the right sleeve of their jackets told you they belonged to one of the gangs the fishmonger had been complaining about not a few minutes earlier. This gang in particular, the Quai-Kisu or Emerald Dagger in Basic, were a faction that splintered off from the main Hutt crime syndicate once their influence in Dandoran lessened. Their trademark was spice smuggling but anyone with two braincells knew that they accepted the lesser charge to hide the true wealth of their criminal activity, flesh trafficking.

Suffice to say, you didn’t want anything to do with them and you most certainly didn’t want them to want anything to do with you.

“Can I help you?” You kept your eyes on them as you handed the fishmonger what you owed her when it was clear they weren’t going to leave; the woman wisely remaining quiet as she accepted the credits.

None of them responded immediately, and you wondered if this was a new scare tactic they were employing to make people anxious. The crimson hue of the Twi’leks eyes glinted as he contemplated you, running down your figure lazily before meeting your eyes again when you frowned,

“Ol’ man Biran available for a house call?” He rumbled, the sun catching the points of the filed canines as he spoke.

“I’m afraid Biran doesn’t make house calls anymore. Besides, he’s been under the weather for the last few days unfortunately.”

You reeled the lie off effortlessly, having learned over the years who Biran would tend to and who he would rather see succumb to whatever ailed them. It was a steep and difficult learning curve for you, your initial training taught you that you must do your utmost to save every life. Biran had laughed in derision, saying that that mindset wouldn’t serve you well out here. These were gangs, not the flyboys of Corellia. Saving one of their lives might condemn countless others. So while you struggled, you accepted that it was his practice and he made the rules and after over two years on Dandoran, you had seen enough victims of the gang warfare to not feel any pity when one of them suffered an injury.

“C’mon beautiful. One of our pals was injured in a… terrible, terrible accident.” The taller of the two human males, a lanky man with a neck that looked much too long and eyes that took way too much liberty in running over your body.

“There are other doctors in Mynock.” You replied steadily, “I’m sure one of them can help.”

To humor them any longer would be to encourage trouble, so you cut the conversation short and turned quite deliberately to make the point that the conversation was over, flashing the fishmonger a wan smile before turning back the way you came.

“We weren’t done talkin’ to you.”

Your eyes widened marginally when an iron grip closed around your upper arm, your free hand dropping the items in your arm immediately to click the safety off your blaster and lift it in the time it took for the Twi’lek to yank you into facing him again.

“Did I say you could lay a hand on me?” You hissed, the blaster pointing upward from where you held it close to your body towards the underside of the Twi’lek’s chin.

“Quite the little spitfire, ain’t she lads?” He crowed, amused by your action. His laughter was like shattered glass on your ears, making you want to wince, but you kept your hand steady even as your heart pounded. You received as much training as anyone when they joined the Rebellion, but your experience in actual combat beyond treating people on the front line was limited. You knew your own limitations, and that there was no way you would be able to take on all three of them.

The hand around your arm squeezed painfully and you clocked the blaster, lifting it closer to sit under the Twi’lek’s chin, “Release me. Now.”

And like most men of his ilk, he ignored you in favor of his own voice,

“From what we’ve seen, you work with the good doctor. Shouldn’t be a bother for you to fix him up. Nicer to look at too, eh fellas?” He tossed over his shoulder to the snickers of his lackeys.

“Then you can go back to target practice with your toy gun.” He chuckled darkly, leaning in where the pungent smell of his breath made you turn your head away in distaste, “That is, if we let you go at all.”

You swallowed thickly at the threat, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as your mind scrambled to come up with a solution, a way out, _something._ You felt the familiar sting of tears at the back of your eyes when each avenue came up blank. You couldn’t think of anything and suddenly, you felt so terribly alone in this shithole of a town on a faraway planet far from anyone who gave a bantha crap who would actually be able to help you.

Their laughter only grated on your already frayed nerves and pissed you off even more. You had fought too hard and suffered too much to let these assholes take the one thing you owned, your freedom. Your eyes flashed with anger and snapped back to the Twi’lek, ready to pull the trigger because if you were going out, it would be on your terms.

Their laughter suddenly ceased then, and you blinked. Had they copped that you planned to take at least one, maybe two of them out with you? Before you could figure it out, your arm was shoved away. You raised your now free hand to steady the blaster as you aimed it at them, but they were backing away, eyes averted.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” You growled, hiding the waver in your voice.

They said nothing in reply as the Twi’lek bared his teeth and made towards you again. One of the humans grabbed his arm and hissed something to him. You couldn’t make it all out, but you swore you heard a name you never thought you’d hear again.

_Teff._

With one last growl and glare, the Twi’lek conceded to the advice of the humans and all three of them melted back into the crowds of Mynock leaving you to release a heavy breath as you lowered your weapon, replacing the safety with ease as your eyes continued to scan the street. You wanted to be certain they had really left.

“Huh, maybe they were smart after all.” You muttered to yourself, proud that you had dealt with the situation somewhat and holstered your blaster against your hip again, “Still got it girl.” You commended yourself as you stooped to pick up your dropped groceries.

A snorted, “I beg to differ” had you blinking up over your shoulder at the familiar, cocksure figure of the Mandalorian; a hand only grazing the blaster at his hip as he stood casually behind you, his head tilted down to look at you and a resounding sigh leaving his helmet when you smiled.

“Mando?”

An incline of his head was the only greeting you received before he crossed his arms across the wide expanse of his armored chest.

“One sec.”

You got back to your feet and, as if by instinct, ran your eyes over his body, “You didn’t poison yourself again, did you?” You teased lightly, realizing that you were seeing him uninjured for the first time. Well, the second time. But walking into a cantina to do battle with a Houk didn’t count in your estimation.

It gave you pause to notice things about him that you didn’t usually; the way he stood, leaning his weight back on his left foot that gave him an air of lazy arrogance that wouldn’t be misplaced in a loth-wolf relaxing in the winter sun. The strength of his thighs seems to be accentuated by the posture; one hand placed securely at his blaster. If you didn’t know any better, his stance was like an open challenge to every male around him; submit or suffer. But you did know him somewhat, and you knew that he didn’t need to lay down any challenge. He had already won the second he stepped off his ship. The wide breadth of space given to him by passers-by only highlighted that fact.

Even with every patch of skin covered, you could feel the raw power rolling off of him, or was it testosterone? Whatever it was, it tugged at a more primal instinct and ignited a slow, steady heat inside of you that made you both embarrassed and intrigued.

Okay, so you were attracted to the way the man _stood._ That was fine, that was acceptable. You were a warm-blooded woman in her prime who knew her desires and embraced them. Finding how a Mandalorian… stood, was just another interesting thing to add to your list of things you found attractive.

Along with a raspy baritone and penchant for trouble…

You know what, it was probably just a fantastic indication that you hadn’t been laid in a while, so you made a mental note to deal with that particular issue later.

“I never poisoned myself.” That same low, gruff voice rose to your bait so easily and you had to bite your lip not to laugh, his hand fisting at his side before he unclenched it. Probably thinking about strangling you, honestly. Now there was a thought, for later. Nope, it was definitely the recent dry spell that had you like this. And the sun. The sun always had a part to play in these delusions.

Mando seemed to figure out your game of teasing him however, when you couldn’t fully mask your smile and responded in kind,

“You’re welcome, by the way.” His voice rumbled and you were certain that if you were only a few inches closer, you would be able to feel the vibrations brush against you.

“For what?” You laughed in disbelief, “I had everything under control before you decided to strut into the fray.”

You tried to prevent the frown from creasing between your brows when you thought a little more on the situation. You had a blaster literally pointed to the neck of one of those thugs and they didn’t care. It didn’t even seem like Mando had drawn his weapon and all three had scarpered? Was there any fairness in the galaxy? Obviously not.

The unpainted helmet tilted, the impassive T-visor giving away nothing of its wearers feelings beyond the sigh that left him, “What did you plan to do? Shoot the son of a mudscuffer and have an entire gang out for blood in less than an hour? Yeah, that’s smart.” He snorted.

Your mouth fell open in incredulity, “Talk about the Jawa calling the Ewok short, you’d have done the exact same thing!” You cursed your short temper, especially when it came to the stubborn mule of a man in front of you. The fact that his voice never once rose frustrated you. It remained gravelly but soft, like the sound of pebbles and stones being pushed and pulled by the ocean you could hear from your bedroom as a child.

You were a mature person; you were proud of how you dealt with most things. But in this instance, you allowed your immature side to rear her head momentarily as you began to stalk back to the practice. A piss poor option since the Mandalorian scoffed and kept up with you easily, obviously not content with you having the last word.

“But I wouldn’t be so reckless to not think it through before shooting them.” He tipped his helmet back a little, as if he dared to look down his nose at you. Frustration simmered in your blood as your eyes narrowed at him sideways.

“I was wrong, you obviously are injured. A blow to the head this time was it, Mando? Must be hidden under that kettle you call a helmet” You let out an exasperated breath, shaking your head, “I’ve no cure for that unfortunately.”

You could have sworn you heard a soft noise that sounded remarkably like a chuckle, but it was so quiet and the streets so noisy that you were certain you were wrong.

When the door to the practice-come-living quarters for yourself and Biran came into view, you stopped short. How did you get back here so quickly? Looking over your shoulder, you realized you had led the Mandalorian on a merry chase to nowhere he needed to be. He didn’t look particularly fazed, but the small voice of guilt that sounded an awful lot like your mother had you opening your mouth before you could think twice,

“Do you want to come in?”

***

What possessed you to invite him in?

It was obvious from both the stilted way you asked and the drawn out, deeply awkward silence that followed. You were about to tuck tail and run inside, slam the door, and pretend you weren’t as mortified as you knew you were when he cocked his head. The movement made you pause in your escape, opening your mouth to tell him to forget about it before the words got lodged in your throat.

“Sure.” Was all he said, and that was how you found yourself half an hour later staring at a fully armed Mandalorian taking up two thirds of the small settee in the living room to the back of the practice, his hands placed on each thigh as they spread a bit when he sat.

Biran, bless him, took up the last third of the same settee, unfazed by the type of man in his living room and chatting merrily about the last Mandalorian he had met over fifteen years ago.

“And that wasn’t you?”

“No.”

“Ah maybe someone you know then!”

“Maybe.”

Mando’s conversation skills were abysmal.

You didn’t have very high expectations in the first place, but watching it without being a participant, was downright comical. You hid your smile behind the glass of water you had fetched for yourself but the slight tilt of his helmet in your direction told you he had caught your amusement. For someone whose face you couldn’t see, you could practically feel his eyes narrow at you. It made the giddiness from being equal parts anxious and entertained from watching Mando try make nice with the elderly Mirialan rise again and you had to physically bite your lip to stop.

Mando wasn’t listening to Biran anymore, that much was obvious. He wasn’t even looking in his direction, more comfortable blatantly glaring at you instead. Biran was unfazed. Truly, the Mirialan didn’t need a response to have a conversation. A listening ear was sometimes all he wanted. It was a characteristic that endeared you to the him in the first place. The elderly were so often overlooked and written off, but when one only cared enough to listen, they would find themselves enriched with experiences no history book could ever compete with.

“…So how do you two know each other?”

Your attention was dragged back into the conversation so fast you might have given yourself whiplash. You blinked a few times as the Mirialan watched Mando with a clueless smile on his face, completely ignorant to the stiff body beside him.

“Coercive medical attention.” You choked a bit on the sip of water you had taken to buy yourself some time to think; _coercive?_ That rotten---

“Ah, you were a difficult patient, were you?” Biran chuckled, knowing your methods well, “Sweet as pie if you do as your told, but the minute you resist she’ll go for you like a sand panther. I can’t imagine there was much room for bedside manners in the Rebellion, but thankfully that attitude works well in cities like Mynock.” You spluttered again, putting the glass down since it was out to get you too apparently.

Of all the treacherous--, why were you so nice to this old sod again? You would show him a sand panther when you ‘forget’ to buy his favorite tea next time you went shopping.

You seethed to yourself, leaning back in the armchair you had perched yourself on earlier, flyaway hairs from the breeze outside falling into your face which you blew away with a frustrated breath.

“Hm, a panther?” Your eyes rose as the low baritone filled the air after Biran had finished having his laugh at your expense. Mando cocked his head pensively to the side as he looked at you briefly, “More like a kitten, I’d say.” And with that, he looked away.

He didn’t bother saying anything else after that, content with letting Biran’s laughter fill the room and smother the tense silence the two of you were sitting in.

You could feel your cheeks heating up once more as you glared daggers at the tin can in front of you. Why did it feel like you were being simultaneously insulted and flirted with? You couldn’t make the distinction, so you didn’t know how to respond.

Instead, you decided to poke at a different part of the conversation.

“For someone who was _coerced,_ you sure do find yourself on my table quick enough when you need treatment.” Your eyes ran up and down the length of his body candidly when he looked back at you, “and when you _don’t_ need treatment, evidently.”

You smirked when the Mandalorian clenched a fist on his thigh, the third occupant in the room seemingly forgotten as Mando hissed,

“I never asked for your help.”

You scoffed and decided not to deign that with a response.

“Besides, I only stopped over for supplies and fuel.” He admitted and a treacherous part of you sunk a bit at the honesty in his voice. Seeing you was just a coincidence, like always. The unspoken words hung heavy in the air and you fought the twinge of sadness that chased you because of them.

Biran looked between the two of you before standing shakily and patting the Mandalorian on the shoulder with no hesitation, “Allow us to provide you with something extra for your travels then.” He turned his wrinkled face towards you with a smile, the deep groves of his crow’s feet increasing as he nodded to the bags of forgotten groceries, “I think our guest should try the crab. Knowing you, you bought too much as usual.”

You flushed at being caught out, were you really that predicable?

“There’s no need. I got what I came for so, I’ll be going now.” Mando stood fluidly despite his armor, and you were once again struck with how different it was seeing him injured as opposed to healthy. You felt you needed to get used to his presence all over again, with how much it filled the room.

“Thank you, for your hospitality.” He tipped his helmet towards Biran, his voice still rather gruff but laced with a polite softness uncharacteristic to him. Biran waved him off and started making his way back out to the practice when he heard the binary from his medi-droid welcoming a new patient.

That left the two of you standing in a room that suddenly felt much too small for the tension that hung around you both like a blanket. You moved into the kitchen to separate the food you would keep and the food you would give to Mando on one of the countertops, tying the bag tightly by the straps so that it stayed clean and fresh when you were done. You couldn’t hear him move, but you could feel the slight disturbance of the air when he leaned his shoulder casually against the doorframe, arms crossed enticingly once more as he watched you.

“So… what did he call you again? A sand… kitten, was it?”

“Oh, shut up.” You growled over your shoulder at him before turning and shoving the bag with two of the Berbersian crabs and some herbs you knew went well with them, into his hands.

“I don’t need these.” He held the bag out, straightening his stance as he pushed himself from the doorframe. You wisely ignored him.

“All you need is a pan. And water. And heat. Boil them and actually give your body some proper nutrients, would you?”

You explained as you began leading him out towards the private entrance of the residence, through the small kitchen and out into an alleyway that gave you an immediate sense of déjà vu the moment Mando stepped outside. The sun was still beating down and it glinted across the helmet that was becoming as recognizable as a face to you.

“In case you didn’t realize, I’m perfectly healthy.” He replied smoothly, getting his bearings as he examined the alleyway and noted the sounds from the nearby street as the direction he needed to go.

“That’d be a first.” You griped at him, but there was no venom in your words, and he knew it.

You knew he was about to leave, and the suddenness of his departure was as jarring as his arrival. You didn’t know why you felt the need to stall, and you pushed that urge down rapidly in the face of the warrior when he looked back at you from assessing the street not a few feet away.

You sighed and let out a chuckle, wondering again how this man constantly came barreling into your life, disrupting the precarious peace you had brokered while here. You might have said it was a nuisance, but deep down, you knew that he brought a breath of life back into yours every time he crossed your path, reinvigorated the aimless routine you found yourself in. It was unsettling, the way this man had wormed his way into being such a… significant presence in your life. Even after only meeting him three times and always under less than pleasant circumstances.

Part of you wanted to tell him he could stay longer if he wanted; but you knew he would refuse.

Part of you wanted to tell him to be safe; but you knew he wouldn’t be.

Part of you wanted to tell him that you would see him around; but you knew that you probably wouldn’t.

So you settled on a lackluster, “good luck on your hunt” with a small smile as a peace offering for the fraught bickering you always seemed to fall into with him. A peace offering, he seemed to accept as he lifted the bag silently and looked inside,

“Pan. Water. Heat. Right?” His own attempt made your smile grow as you chuckled and nodded,

“You got it, sunshine.”

He nodded once in affirmation while you moved around him back towards the door of the practice. For some reason, you didn’t want to watch him walk away this time. It was easier for you to leave instead. A rumble of your name from the Mandalorian had you looking over your shoulder at him questioningly, the blush that had risen to your cheeks at the sound of your name on his lips not lost on Mando. He had turned back towards you when you moved and after a beat, spoke again.

“See you next time.”

And just like that, your chest hollowed, and a warmth filled you. The weight of his words were like an embrace, a reassurance you didn’t know you needed. Had needed, for longer than you probably knew. It was something secure and encouraging in these times of change and uncertainty, and you felt yourself cling to those words like a lifeline.

The placid nod you offered him with a gentle smile was all he stuck around for. Spinning on his heels, he took off towards the streets of Mynock once more, disappearing in a flash of beskar and steel and for once, you didn’t ponder about possibly seeing him again. You knew you would.

***

Din settled back into the pilots’ chair of the _Razor Crest_ twenty minutes later, running through the familiar process of flying the ship out of the atmosphere and into the comfort of space, eager to escape into hyperdrive as soon as he was clear enough from Dandoran.

_See you next time?_

He groaned leaned his head back against the chair, staring up at the ceiling of the cockpit, his brows drawn low over his eyes as he frowned. What possessed him to offer that promise, he didn’t know. Maybe it was the way your eyes had dimmed slightly when he was about to leave, or when you had wished him luck on a job he was still so uncertain about. Maybe it was the way you blushed when he said your name.

Or maybe it was just because he wanted to see you again too.

And that was the most troubling reason of all.

Din didn’t do friends, he had acquaintances and colleagues even if the term was tenuous. He had the covert and the foundlings, but he didn’t have people he actually wished to see. Never trusted anyone beyond what they could each offer one another. You hadn’t looked for anything from him, and it was unsettling. He didn’t know if he could trust you, years of training and experience told him otherwise. But from the old memories of you pressing Raquor’daan poison from his wound to the teasing friendship you displayed with the old Mirialan, his resolve softened a little.

His eyes flicked to the rapidly shrinking planet he was leaving.

Trust was too strong a word right now, but respect… he could admit that he respected you. And that alone put you on a very short list of people, one he was sure you would never truly understand the importance of.

And he was right.

You would never know the significance of being on that very short list of people, but in that moment, Din’s grudging respect for you set both of your lives on a very different course than either of you ever anticipated; one that revolved around a very special, very small, green child.

***

Once Dandoran had faded sufficiently behind the _Razor Crest,_ he keyed in the co-ordinates to the far reaches of the Outer Rim and entered hyperspace and after several days of travel, he finally struck beskar when the tracking fob starting beeping as he coasted through space. He smirked behind his helmet as he changed direction and noted the closest planet on his navicomputer where his bounty was hidden.

Arvala-7.

 _Gotcha_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> djarinsbeskar.tumblr.com


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we come to the end of the prologue chapters! They spiralled and ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated but here we are. I was going to split the following into two separate chapters, simply due to the length but it disrupted the flow which is why I’m offering you a 14k+ chapter this week. Be warned that there is a lot of time jumping in this chapter and hopefully I’ve labelled it clearly enough. Now, I’m just gonna sit here and pray my bullshit logic actually makes sense to get us where we want to go!
> 
> Thank you all so much for your continued support, it means so much to know that so many people have taken precious time out of their days, amidst countless amazing fics, to give mine a read. That alone has made this current lockdown (week 9 and counting) more bearable and has given me motivation and happiness I was so worried I would lose!
> 
> Some notes on Stitches going forward:
> 
> This fic will follow canon to a point, meaning we will arrive at the same conclusions’ canon presents but not necessarily in the same way. As of season 1, it has followed canon faithfully up until the last chapter and this deviance will continue to be sprinkled on season 2. I don’t want to weigh this fic down rehashing the canon plot, so some of what may occur will be off stage. 
> 
> The explicit rating tagged to this fic will be put to use going forward so I stress that no one under the age of 18 should be reading it. Explicit will expand to include multiple, graphic sexual situations from here on so I apologise if that is not your cup of tea. I will endeavour to list any warnings at the start of each chapter to ensure no one is hit with anything that makes them uncomfortable.
> 
> Again, thank you all so much for reading! I hope you enjoy the next instalment!  
> ******************************************************************************************************

**_9 ABY, Mynock, Dandoran. Present time - Sometime after midnight._ **

The fourth time you met him, well… it wasn’t him at all.

A Kubaz tracker fell at your feet, smoke rising from the charred wound on his back. The dull, trunked mask he wore facing you where he fell; emotionless in death, as they were in life. You didn’t miss the startling green of his right sleeve against the dark robes he wore. The Quai-Kisu. If you weren’t sure before, you were convinced now.

You were being hunted.

A small sound pulled your attention down to the swaddled bundle you had hidden against your chest under your jacket and your heart constricted. Another child of war.

“Shh, shh…” you tried to soothe him as he fussed a little, no doubt in response to your own frayed nerves. You stood from your crouched position behind one of the many dumpsters that allowed you to take out the Kubaz so quickly. Checking to make sure the shot hadn’t attracted any more attention in the desolate alleyway amidst the cacophony of blaster fire and shouts filling the night air as the Quai-Kisu continued their attack on the city. Red plumes of smoke billowed from the fires caused by the explosives bounty hunters and imperials alike favored using for entry into buildings close to where you had escaped from Biran’s practice.

You had made it about fifty feet deeper into the alley before you heard several sets of footsteps approaching. You crouched down again almost immediately behind an empty crate sitting in one of the open doorways of an abandoned building, your blaster held close in one hand and the child in the other.

“…thought they saw a woman running this way.”

“If we lose… this time, Gideon… our heads.”

“….heard he killed… on Nevarro.”

“Just _find_ them.”

The conversation was disjointed, you couldn’t make out everything they were saying as the chaos engulfing this part of Mynock reached a fever pitch. Your only clue to who they were, was their accent. It was native to Dandoran, so you assumed – maybe recklessly – that the empire hadn’t landed on Mynock just yet. You should have started running again, but all you could do was lean your head back against the wall and try to swallow down the dryness in your throat as the night sky burned above you. Even if you were told later on that the chaos only extended down one of the main streets of Mynock, you would never be able to shake the feeling that the whole planet was under siege. Such was how the unknown exacerbated your fears.

“What have you done this time, Mando?” You whispered to yourself, shushing the child as a particularly loud explosion in the distance made him fret. You looked down at the small, wrinkled face staring back up at you with wide, old eyes and you released a breath.

“I’ll get you somewhere safe, little one. I promise.”

**_9 ABY, Arvala-7. Three Days Earlier…_ **

Din felt another headache coming on.

Wait, no. That wasn’t true. He had had a perpetual headache for the last four months, ever since he found his ship stripped for parts by those little fucking thieves on this very planet and became the unwitting guardian to his-- _the_ kid.

He wished he were alone so he could rub the tiredness out of his eyes, but he was currently sitting in the ramshackle, yet sturdy and chaotically organized home of the Ugnaught he met here when he first found the kid. If you had told Din four months ago that he would be sitting at a table with an ex-shock trooper and an Ugnaught discussing the safety of fifty-year-old baby – all the while being served tea by an IG unit – he would have laughed, shot you, then laughed again.

He wasn’t laughing now.

No, the same coiling nausea - that he had since recognized as worry all those months ago when he began his hunt - roiled in his stomach and prevented any such laughter. He was worried.

Worried about bringing the child back to a pit of vipers who would as easily hand him over to the Empire as blink.

Worried about failing, and Empire getting him anyway despite his best efforts.

Worried about what would happen to the child if he were no longer around to protect him.

Worried about surviving and failing the child in entirely different ways instead.

Worry… yes, worry was no longer a foreign concept to him anymore. Now, it was his constant bedfellow; keeping him awake, and sitting on his chest until he couldn’t breathe, startling him awake when he finally did succumb to exhaustion and making him paranoid about every glance or murmur made in their general direction wherever they went.

It was as if the whole galaxy hunted him, hunted the child. His foundling. His _ad’ika._

No matter how much he resisted and fought it, he had grown attached to the little womp rat. His eyes flicked to where the kid was watching the conversation with rapt attention, large eyes absorbing every sight and even larger ears twitching as they listened to every word.

Din’s features softened immediately as he sighed quietly enough for the modulator in his helmet not to pick it up, everyone else ignorant to the direction the Mandalorians thought had turned to. To them, he merely sat silent with his elbows resting on his knees, helmet facing them, but his eyes were trained dutifully on his _ad’ika._ The kid still infuriated him most of the time, always touching things he shouldn’t, eating things he shouldn’t or getting into places he most definitely shouldn’t be in.

The memory of the wrinkly green face staring up at him from inside his boot when he tried to pull it on in a panic when he couldn’t find the kid one day flitted across his mind. Yeah, the kid was trouble, but a slight smile now touched Din’s lips whenever he had to reprimand him or put him back in his pram.

He would take it to the grave, but the womp rat had him wrapped around his clawed little finger and Din knew he was, quite frankly, fucked.

“Well? What do you think, Mando?”

Din lifted his head to find all eyes on him, bantha balls what did he miss this time?

**_9 ABY, Mynock, Dandoran. 13 Hours Ago…_ **

“Now, are you going to play chasing on the rooftops again?” You voice was soft but stern as you finished placing the fracture-sleeve on the boy’s arm. The sleeve would speed up most of the healing in a few days, but it would still hurt for the duration. A good lesson in your opinion.

You smiled when a tearful shake of the head was the answer you received along with a stuffy sniffle.

“That’s good. You’ve learned your lesson then.” You gave the boys sandy hair a pat before standing from where you had crouched by the chair your patient sat in and turned to his mother,

“It looked worse than it was.”

Her fearful eyes made you want to elaborate further but there was a fine line between comforting someone and scaring them with too much information that they didn’t fully understand so you mulled your words carefully before speaking again,

“It was a clean break; his arm took the impact of the fall, but it will heal good as new in time.” You explained with a reassuring smile as you tossed your used gloves into the tray that dutifully hovered beside you before it zipped off in the direction of the medical waste disposal unit.

Her relieved sigh told you that was enough. You smiled at her thanks and led her back towards the small desk where the medi-droid kept the administration in order. You listed off what to expect in the coming days, what not to worry about and what to keep an eye on lest he need to return.

You offered the boy another wave that he returned with his good arm as they left and rolled your shoulders. It was an hour or so past noon, and your muscles were already stiff and tired from an arduous week on your feet, but you couldn’t find it in you to complain.

Any time you thought of what else you might do if not this, you drew a blank. You loved your work, loved helping people by using the skills given to you. But there was still a part of you that felt… hollow. Perhaps it was self-centered, but while your job was fulfilling on a professional level, you wanted something more. The elusive _something_ you had yet to put your finger on.

You made your way over to the sink to wash your hands at the back wall of the room. Biran’s practice was nothing to write home about. It was a modest space, but it was functional and clean. A small waiting area to the right when you first walked in and the small desk where appointments and prescriptions were dealt with. The main area of the room was screened off by a repurposed metal partition to give patients privacy while they were being treated. Since you were the only one working full time, only one examination bed sat against the right wall. The set up was not unlike how you had organized your examination room while on Klatooine and Biran had no problem with you reorganizing this one; knowing your own system was infinitely more efficient when you needed to focus.

You had just turned the water off and were drying your hands when you heard the medi-droid begin its routine welcome spiel whenever someone walked through the door. You raced through the pre-programmed speech to yourself with an absent smile on your face, a stupid game you played with yourself to see how quickly you could say it before the droid had finished in its’ paced, robotic cadence.

“I’ll be with you in a minute!” You called, the partition was open now, as there were no patients currently being seen to, but you liked to let people know you knew they were there anyway. You hummed to yourself as you brushed a few flyaway strands of hair from your face and made to turn towards the waiting area when someone saying your name questioningly gave you room to pause.

You blinked away the surprise and turned quickly, looking towards the entrance, but the voice had come from much closer, which you realized only when your eyes were directed down to an Ugnaught holding a small bundle in his arms. You opened your mouth to respond, but he beat you to it,

“That is you, is it not?”

You had lived in questionable towns long enough to know that giving out your name freely may not be the smartest thing to do when someone asked. A lot of people on Mynock knew your name, but even more simply knew you as the female medic at Biran’s so you hesitated in answering.

Quickly evaluating the Ugnaught, you immediately realized that – despite the frown that marred his features – he had honest eyes. However, it was ultimately the slight squirm from the bundle in his arms that convinced you. No one with a child could mean any harm, right? You nodded,

“Yeah, that’s me. Does your child need help?” You ventured to guess his reason for being here. After all, just because he knew your name, didn’t mean he was here for any other purpose other than for the services you offered.

You had learned, over the years that sometimes folk came here wanting help but were not sure how to ask for it. You found that by broaching the subject before they got cold feet usually pushed them to accept. Though Biran might argue that it swung between gentle coaxing or man-handling, there being no in-between.

_The Mando Method._

Biran now took way too much enjoyment out of calling it that any time you had to get mean in order for a difficult patient to let you do your job. Biran was a regular comedian and you never hesitated to tell him to fuck off back to Naboo to be just that and leave you in peace. Laughter was usually the only response you received.

You were drawn out of your thoughts however, when a single, large, green ear flopped out from the crease in the bundle. Your eyes were immediately enraptured by the small child – baby, really, as he stared up at you with bright, mischievous eyes. You couldn’t help but smile at him, earning you a coo in return and a single, three-clawed hand lifted from the slightly too large brown robes, to wrap around the finger you had lifted in response.

“More importantly, who is this?” Your voice filled with warmth at the genuine delight you experienced when the child responded with a garbled little noise. What a darling little thing, you had never seen anything like it in all time travelling the galaxy. Your eyes still scanned what you could see of the baby while he was distracted with your finger, not noticing anything immediately that would suggest it was ill.

“I see why he likes you.” The Ugnaught nodded sagely, pulling your attention back to him with an arched brow. His jowls twitched as he smiled when the child let out what sounded like a complaint once the attention was off it. You never considered yourself to be good with children, simply from not having much experience with them, not because you didn’t like them. Your life never put you on a path that involved midnight feeds, tiny clothes, and childish laughter. Rather, your life ran perpendicular to that path, always away from that reality, never towards it.

“He…?” you began cautiously, wondering why you only seemed to ever have conversations with stall owners who were too obvious, or strangers who were too cryptic.

The Ugnaught looked behind him, towards the open door and seemed to consider his options before looking back at you with stern yet soft hazel eyes, “I was sent by the Mandalorian. He needs your help to hide his child.”

You couldn’t have hidden your shock even if you had been promised a million credits to do so.

**_9 ABY, The Lava flats, Nevarro. Thirty-Two Hours Earlier…_ **

His hand closed mercilessly around the lying, treacherous neck of Karga before he could even finish his sentence, the words lodged in his throat as Din squeezed, leaning down so he could growl at him,

“Give me one good reason not to snap your neck right now, _aruetii_?”

Their camp had just been set upon by the reptavians that stalked the lava flats of Nevarro while they camped for the night, Karga’s fatal wound healed by his _ad’ika_ , and fellow mercenaries shot not five minutes later by their own boss.

He had drawn his blaster on the Guild agent immediately, pulling the pram that held the exhausted child behind him in the same breath. When Karga had explained the real reason for inviting him back to Nevarro – to kill him and hand the child over to the client – Din had seen red. That was how the disgraced former magistrate found his windpipe being slowly crushed by the usually calm Mandalorian.

“Perhaps, you should let him speak.” Kuiils’ voice rose from amidst the growls from Cara to kill him and run and Karga’s gasped chokes as he tried to pull in the air his lungs so desperately needed.

Retreating into his mind after several long moments – to his decades of training – he relaxed himself enough to rip his hand from Karga’s neck, realizing the sense in Kuiil’s words. He had his blaster raised at Karga in the next second, willing to listen, but equally as willing to drop him.

“You have ten seconds.” He snarled, his voice deathly calm and colder than the winters on Hoth.

***

Karga wanted to use the child as bait for Din to get close enough to kill the client.

“He’s not going anywhere near them.” Din shot down Karga’s idea point blank. The agent threw up his hands in exasperation and poked at the fire to keep it kindled as they strategized their next move.

“What do you suggest we do, then?” He bit out, frustration at their progress evident in the older man’s tone.

Din pondered an idea only for a moment before speaking,

“Take me instead.”

“You?” Karga frowned, confusion written on his features as he tried to piece together Din’s strategy.

“Tell them you caught me. Bring the kids pram and say he’s in there.” Din explained, “Get me close enough and then I’ll kill him.”

“And the child?” Cara ventured to ask.

Din didn’t answer, he stood and approached the pram hovering beside Kuiil and – using the controls on his vambrace – opened it. His _ad’ika_ still slept soundly, curious eyes closed for once and his three fingers closed around the small metal ball of one of the _Razor Crests_ control levers. The child was obsessed with the thing, and he only half-heartedly tried to take it back from him these days.

He was a stubborn one, that was for sure. And he fixated on certain things that made no sense to Din at all. The silver ball, a pulse rifle bullet casing that had fallen from his cape where it must have landed when he used it that day, even the carapace of the blue shelled crab that had unintentionally become a catch all for errant screws and credits before his _ad’ika_ decided he preferred to sit in it over anywhere else on the ship.

_“Boil them and actually give your body some proper nutrients, would you?”_

The echoes of your voice rang in his mind as he looked back down at his charge. He wouldn’t say he had forgotten you per-se, but with the mess his life had turned into since leaving Mynock – being on the run from both the Guild and Empire alike – there was little room or opportunity to think more on _next time._

Maybe…

Apprehension crawled up his spine. Could he justify pulling you into this mess? Could he even trust you if he could justify it?

A gloved finger gently caressed the tip of one of the child’s ears as he contemplated this possibility. His initial response was flat out refusal, the more who knew about the child, the more at risk he was. But as he thought about it –thought about you – he tried to piece together what he knew about you from the few fateful encounters you had had together.

He remembered the Mirialan saying you were former Rebel Alliance. His eyes flickered to Cara who stood close by, keeping watch. No one from the Rebellion seemed to have any love for the Empire so logically speaking, you wouldn’t turn the child over out of any sense of loyalty.

He remembered your refusal to accept credits for treating him on Klatooine, so he knew money wasn’t a motivator for you to claim the bounty on the kid’s head.

He could admit that he had been a… difficult patient, but you treated him as you would anyone else. Din knew you had a sense of fairness; if someone was hurt, you helped. If someone was rude, you responded in kind. That convinced him that you wouldn’t want any harm to come to an innocent, which the child was.

And then he remembered the disarming smile you had sent him over your shoulder when you had crouched to pick up your groceries, merely from recognizing a familiar face… or helmet. The unguarded emotions you let yourself display so openly had never made him question you. You just didn’t seem like the type to hide your feelings and by default, your intentions.

But to drag you into this bantha shit show? Could he do that and still be able to look at himself in the mirror if something happened? The kids fussed a bit, his eyes blinking open blearily up at Din and drawing the warrior’s attention back to him, two small arms raised expectantly, waiting to be picked up.

Yes.

The answer came instantly as he lifted his _ad’ika_ from the pram to sit in his arms, weighting practically nothing at all. For this foundling, _his_ foundling- he would risk anything – anyone – even if he could never look himself in the eye again. His clan was small, only two, and yet he would tear the galaxy apart to make sure it was safe.

After ironing out the finer details of the plan, the small party were packed and ready to go.

He took Kuiil aside after the blurrg had been saddled and the child ready to return to the ship.

“Go to Dandoran.”

The Ugnaught looked at him, his expression unreadable as he furrowed his brows.

“Dandoran… is part of Hutt Space, is it not?” He queried.

“Not anymore.” Din explained in hushed tones, “It’s not ideal but there isn’t an imperial presence there from what I’ve seen of it.” Din watched the Ugnaught’s reaction before continuing,

“It’s an ocean planet, so the capital has not just a spaceport but several harbor ports large enough to land the _Razor Crest._ It wouldn’t be anyone’s first guess when looking for the ship so might give you extra time.

“Lay low but if you have to leave, don’t stay outside. Like you said, Dandoran is former Hutt Space and the locals haven’t improved much since then. Find a doctor by the name of Biran. I know the woman he works for and she knows the city well. If anything happens, she should be able to find somewhere to hide. I’ll come find you and the kid once it’s safe.”

Kuiil was silent for a beat longer than Din was comfortable with, every second the kid remained on Nevarro was a second longer than Din wanted.

“This woman, do you trust her?”

He frowned behind his helmet; they didn’t have time to go over _that_ particular question since Din could hardly answer it when he had way more time to think on it.

“I know she would never help the Empire.” Was all he could give by way of an answer.

“In that case, I wish you luck Mandalorian. And for a swift reunification with your child and the woman you send him to.”

“That—”

“I have spoken.” Was all Kuiil said before shuffling back to his blurrg, dismissing the conversation as concluded, leaving Din to merely sigh in resignation.

**_9 ABY, Mynock, Dandoran. 12 Hours Ago…_ **

A child.

You had raised a hand when the Ugnaught tried to say more, needing time to process. You directed him towards the single door that sat adjacent to your examination bed and let him know he could stay here as long he needed. Only you or Biran used the living quarters and there were no windows out onto the main street so there was no risk of passers-by happening across the Ugnaught and Mando’s child.

_Mando’s child?_

The Ugnaught frowned, hesitant to go with so few words exchanged but you could feel it in your bones that this was a can of worms waiting to be opened and Maker be damned, you were going to process the first surprise of the afternoon before you faced anything else.

You ensured the Ugnaught that you would be with him soon, smiling over his shoulder when Biran hobbled into the practice after hearing voices,

“This is Biran, my boss. He’ll make you comfortable while you wait. I’ll close up the practice so no one else visits and then we can talk, okay?”

You hoped you sounded convincing enough and understanding flickered across those intelligent eyes as he gave you a curt nod, turning to follow Biran into the living room while the little green child cooed at you over his shoulder.

Once the door had clicked closed, you let out a heavy exhale. You tightened the tie your hair was in and placed your hands on your hips as you frowned.

Of course, _next time_ involved a complication. You were starting to believe _complicated_ was just what came with being near the Mandalorian. But a child… you never saw that one coming. Third degree burns? Expected. Poison again? You would have bet your life on it. Loss of limbs? Probable. A child? Absolutely fucking not.

Who the hell had he impregnated to have a hybrid child like that?

You were not self-absorbed, but you appreciated your looks and knew men – and even several women – found you attractive. You had fleetingly, if now vainly, thought that the Mandalorian did too but you were obviously way off the bat when it came to knowing his type.

Pity, you thought almost sourly, for all your bickering, you would have fucked him in a heartbeat.

Now _that_ had been something you had to make peace with after your last encounter. Unfortunately, now it just seemed like it would always stay in the back of your mind, nothing more than a passing fancy.

“Oh well, can’t win them all.” You commiserated to yourself as you bolted the practice door, ensuring all four locks were in place. You still lived on Dandoran after all, this was not overkill.

You had just made your way back to your workstation to start clearing up when the same welcome message from your medi-droid filled the silent space. You frowned over your shoulder at it, no one had walked in---

But a tiny green alien had waddled out through the now open door to your living space, looking up at the droid curiously as it spoke to him. Beyond your confusion at the door being open when you specifically remember hearing it shut, you were somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer size of the little guy as he stood in brown robes that were much too large and swamped his tiny frame. He soon grew bored of the droid when it floated back to the desk and turned to look around the practice.

The glint of mischief in his eyes froze the smile that had unwittingly been forming on your face and you remembered that this was in fact a baby, surrounded by medical equipment, hell, medical waste if he got into the disposal unit. A vision of Mando feeding you to a sarlacc if you had to tell him his child pricked himself with a needle or burned himself with a cauterizer put the fear of the Maker in you. You hurriedly made your way over to the baby who had found an errant piece of gauze to hold onto, delighting in unravelling it as you knelt beside him.

“Hey there cutie, this isn’t the place for a baby. Why don’t we get you inside?” _Where the biggest hazard is scalding your tongue on too hot tea._ You still hadn’t dismissed the very real possibility of Mando murdering you in some heinously painful way if something happened to his son so you only thought about it for a moment before scooping the child into your arms before he could find something _less_ _soft_ to play with.

You immediately feared the child would start crying when you picked him up; it was one of the many things that frightened you about babies this young. The chance that they might make strange was high and he was no doubt missing his father and wondering why he was on a different planet with new sights and smells. As it was, however, you had nothing to worry about. The child simply blinked up at you, his eyes transfixed on your hair, particularly those strands that framed your face haphazardly after the chaos of the last hour.

When he reached out a small hand, you smiled hesitantly and tilted your head just enough for him to touch the length of your hair, his happy gurgles making the slight sting when he yanked it worthwhile. Now that you seemed to have found something to entertain the child with, you cleared up the rest of the practice with him balanced in one arm. His attention soon moved from your flyaway hairs to the full body of it in your hair tie and an expectant hand reached up for it along with an annoyed grunt when he couldn’t reach it.

You snorted at the sound.

Now there was something he must have learned from his father, annoyed huffs and growls being what you had to translate the majority of the time you spent with the Mandalorian. It seemed to be the only thing he took after Mando, given that the strip of flesh you had seen of Mando’s hip was most definitely not green and last time you checked, the man was five inches taller than you at the very least. This child didn’t seem like it was even the length of your forearm, Maker only knew how Mando got the mother pregnant.

Best not to dwell on that when you’re carrying his son, you reprimanded yourself soundly, giving the child an apologetic smile even though you were certain he hadn’t a clue what was going through your mind, much more invested in getting a handful of your hair.

You sighed, something told you this was going to be a long day.

**_9 ABY, The Lava Flats, Nevarro. 11 Hours Ago…_ **

Din tried not to stagger as he landed on the lava flats as the plumes of smoke from where Gideon’s TIE fighter crashed rose. The IG unit that Kuiil had left with them seemed to have healed the worst of his head injury back in the cantina, but he still felt waves of dizziness wash over him periodically.

Cara and Karga met him halfway and turned to keep up with him as he made no effort to slow his pace while making his way towards the town as soon as his feet hit the ground,

“Mando take it easy, it’s over.” Karga bolstered his words with a clap to his shoulder that only made Din growl low in his throat and continue to stalk forward,

“I need a ship. A fast one.” Was all he said when he saw both Cara and Karga open their mouths to speak. Whatever they planned to say died at his tone.

He had been gone too long. He didn’t think they would end up under siege by Moff Gideon, having planned to follow Kuiil to Dandoran within a few hours, not a full day later. His stomach churned as an endless stream of possibilities ran through his mind, each one worse than the other; the _Razor Crest_ blown up by TIE fighters, the ship getting boarded by Imperials and his _ad’ika_ taken, Imperials finding the child with you and knowing all the horrors they could cause to a woman.

Din swallowed back the rising nausea, what was he thinking? Sending the kid to you? It was all well and good when it had only been four – read; two squadrons – of stormtroopers, but now he knew the Imps were more organised than he originally thought with a commander like Gideon at the helm.

His only respite was knowing that if Gideon had known the child wasn’t on Nevarro, then he would have left immediately to hunt him down. So that meant, at least until he died, that Gideon thought the kid was still with Din and not on an ocean planet in the home of a medic he already owed too much to.

Karga was cautiously telling him that the bounty on his head would be lifted and the Guild would be ready to forgive and forget should he want jobs in future and while that was a better alternative to being on the run, he couldn’t find it in him to be pleased. All he could think about was getting off Nevarro and to Dandoran, _now._

Once they had reached the outskirts of the town, Din stopped and scanned the ships currently docked outside. He spotted an Imperial gunship sitting empty and abandoned, no doubt the carrier of Gideon’s reinforcements and immediately turned to make a beeline for it. It wasn’t an X-wing, but it would get him to Dandoran quick enough. 

**_9 ABY, Mynock, Dandoran. 9 Hours Ago..._ **

This was not how you imagined your evening was going to go.

Soon after you returned the child to the frantic Ugnaught, you learned several things. One, that his name was Kuiil (“I’m so sorry for my manners I was just surprised earlier.”). Second, that Mando was not the biological father of the child (“I was wondering how the logistics of his helmet would work with ears that size.”). Third, that the whole reason Mando even had the child, was to protect him from the Empire.

You felt your blood turn to ice as he explained that remnants of the Empire were hunting this tiny baby and that Mando, having initially been the bounty hunter that captured him, broke the Guild Code and rescued him instead. He had been on the run ever since. You wouldn’t lie and say you hadn’t thought about the Mandalorian since your last fateful encounter, but you were often left with more questions than answers any time you went down that particular rabbit hole. You didn’t know if Mando rescuing a child was a contradiction or validation of what you thought you knew about him.

Beyond that – and more importantly – was the fact that the child that now wandered happily under the coffee table between the settee and armchair in the living room Mando had sat in not four months ago, was in danger. You had seen first-hand what the Empire was capable of.

You took in a shuddering breath as you took a sip of your tea, trying to will your hands not to shake as your mind went down a path of memories you desperately wished you could forget.

Villages and towns razed to the ground, planets obliterated in the blink of an eye, countless lives destroyed.

You were not a soldier. You never took part in battles. But you saw your fair share of their aftermath, if not working throughout them, trying to save the fallen. Deciding who lived and who died in split seconds when you could only triage and treat one at a time.

With soldiers it was hard enough, with civilians it had been downright impossible.

In all your years, you had never known the Empire to be merciful or benevolent. If the same people who could cause the level of destruction you had seen wanted the child, there could be no good reason for it. You felt a lump in your throat at the faces of all races and ages flashed through your mind, dead before you could even try to help them after an invasion as the Empire searched for rebel outposts. A small chirp had you looking down as the little green child looked up at you with those fathomless eyes inquisitively, his small hands lifting in the universal youngling sign to be picked up.

Your heart broke as you lifted him onto your lap, where was his family if Mando was now looking after him? What horrors had he seen and couldn’t comprehend? You wondered if the baby had nightmares… you hoped not.

He seemed like a happy little fellow all the same, well behaved if a little mischievous, but no more than any child his age was. You couldn’t see the Mandalorian having much patience for a child however, it was baffling to even try and imagine it.

That itself brought on a whole new line of questions, the most prominent one being why did he trust you with his child? You had wracked your brain countless time since Kuiil had arrived running through your encounters with the Mandalorian, trying to see if you missed something, _anything,_ that would have told you he felt he could trust you to protect the child. He was a man of few words at the best of time, and you hadn’t been around him long enough to recognize his body language apart from when it was defensive and agitated.

There was nothing. Nothing that could explain why he sent him here, to Dandoran of all places. Wouldn’t the child have been safer in the Core? From what you knew, imperial remnants didn’t dare go further than the Mid-Rim.

Mando didn’t seem to trust the New Republic though, now that you thought about it, neither as a bounty hunter nor as a Mandalorian. Few in the Outer Rim did, and the longer you stayed, the more doubt crept into your own mind regarding their intentions.

Your only experiences so far had been your clinic being closed to fund something more glamourous in the Core and the condescension of some New Republic pilots when they landed here for the rare arrest warrant or refuel. Watching the New Republic now – as an outsider – you saw much more of the ugliness you hadn’t been aware of when the Empire first fell. Maybe it was naivety on your part as a young veteran of the Rebellion, but it seemed to you now that all people in power were inherently the same, some used force and some used bureaucracy. In the end, the same people got screwed over.

Your leg bounced nervously as you chewed your lip, brows furrowed while you were deep in thought, and the child thought it was an absolutely fantastic game, giggling as he was bounced gently because of it, the sound drawing your attention back to him with a smile.

There was no raquor’daan venom, or dislocations or gangs this time. Yet, for all the times Mando had trusted you to treat his injuries, this felt like the first true testament of that tentative confidence he seemed to have in you and your abilities.

Steeling your nerves once more when you realized that, your leg stopped bouncing.

There was no way in Malachor you would let him, or the child down.

***

After that, the hours seemed to fly by and drag on simultaneously.

Kuiil had stressed how far the shadow of the Empire still stretched when you had tentatively tried to reassure yourself by stating out loud that there was nothing to connect Nevarro to Dandoran, that it was as random a planet as any to choose.

But the Ugnaught was not so optimistic. The Empire might be gone, but the officers that still walked free had the same contacts with local warlords and gangs that they had in the past. You had to be careful, any one of those people could alert the Imps to the child’s location before the Mandalorian had a chance to reach them.

If he was even still alive.

The thought sent a shudder down your spine. The only reason you were keeping your cool, was with the knowledge that this was temporary, that there was someone – even off planet – who had a plan. Someone who knew what to do. Mando was that someone in your mind, because if you let yourself think that you would have to make choices or decisions that affected the child, a raw and biting insecurity rose like bile in the back of your throat.

Injuries, sickness, even triage you could handle. You could think on your feet and make decisions – oftentimes difficult ones – without a second thought or moment of doubt. Pacing with the child as he started to doze on your chest, lulled by the warmth, you couldn’t draw on any knowledge or experience to help you make a decision about what to do.

Fleetingly you wondered if this was common for new mothers, having no experience of your own in that area either for yourself or from friends.

 _Most would have had a few months to come to terms and learn though_ … you thought in derision, your eyes glancing down as the child let out a frustrated noise, obviously fighting sleep. You smiled and patted the back of his head gently to try encouraging him to rest. 

Your wayward thoughts and focus on the child meant you were only half listening to the conversation between Biran and Kuiil,

“And if they do find him here?” Biran had ventured to ask in order to try plan their next steps should it come to that.

You watched as Kuiil let out a huff, his broad fingers pressing against his chin in thought before hazel eyes lifted to yours in calm resolution, “Then you take the child and run.”

You blinked, what?

Your expression must have shown your visible confusion even while Biran nodded his agreement,

“If this location is compromised, then you need to get off Dandoran. You can fly, can you not?”

“She’s from Pamarthe, of course she can.” Biran answered while you just gaped, eyes flickering between the two elders.

“I arrived here on the Mandalorian’s ship. It is hidden at the harbor near the south port, surrounded by haulage containers.”

Kuiil placed your mug where the practice was on the coffee table, his own as the main entrance to the south port and Biran’s as the elusive location of the Mandalorian's ship. Your mind felt like it was wading through a bog, slow and lethargic so you simply shook your head and held up a hand,

“Why are you talking as if the Mandalorian isn’t going to show up?” You hated the waver in your voice, but you would not, could not take this child off-planet.

“Why can’t you take him?” You asked Kuiil hotly, the reality of the situation making frustration and anxiety sting the backs of your eyes while your heart thumped in your chest, “You’re the one Mando trusted with his child, not me.”

“Be realistic.” It was Biran that spoke up on the Ugnaught’s behalf and you felt your countenance struggle a little more at the familiar but determined face of your closest friend in Mynock, his old, tattooed face split with a fond smile he often threw your way when you got frustrated with a problem, waiting for you to catch on to the answer.

“Kuiil and I, we’re both a bit old to be running from imperials anymore.” The words hung heavy in the air at what was left unsaid. _But we can buy you some time._

You shook your head, “No. Absolutely not.” The burning behind your eyes was overwhelming you as you tried to keep them in, but Maker knew, the glisten of unshed tears was obvious to both males who sat in front of you.

“It wasn’t just the lack of imperial presence on Dandoran that made Mando choose to send his child here.” Kuiil added, approaching you as you sat down slowly on the settee, looking dejectedly at the mugs and wondering why you had ever thought this wasn’t enough. Why you thought you needed more out of life than what you had already been given.

“I can’t take care of a child.” You said quietly, finally addressing the real fear you had. Kuiil chuckled a bit at that and your brows furrowed a little before he replied,

“Do you really think the Mandalorian was any better?”

That got a weak smile out of you and a laugh from Biran. You knew he was trying to make you feel better, and you felt a strong affection for the gruff Ugnaught’s kind intentions regardless of the situation. He didn’t seem like someone who minced words or sprinkled hard truths with niceties, no wonder Mando liked him. But he was gentle and kind as he placed a heavy hand on your shoulder in comfort.

“We have to think of the child and what’s best for him.”

You took a breath and looked down at the little being in question.

This wasn’t about you.

It wasn’t about what you feared might happen to yourself or to Kuiil and Biran if the Empire came knocking. You nodded hesitantly in acquiescence and allowed Kuiil to show you in more detail the path he had taken to get here, the command codes to the _Razor Crest_ as you learned Mando’s ship was called, and where to go to next once out of atmosphere. It was a lot of information at once, and you only heard half of it as you met Biran’s eye from across the table, the fear no doubt showing in your eyes as he gave you a small nod.

 _Here is something you can do to make a difference._ His slight smile told you. _Here is something we can both do._

**_9 ABY, on the Hydian Way. 5 Hours Ago…_ **

_Target located. Allied forces on Mynock engaged. Standby for instruction._ The commlink in the Imperial gunship crackled, the widespread message making the Mandalorian clench his fists tighter around the control column of the ship.

If one were to look at Din, they would say he was the picture of calm. His movements as he flew the Imperial gunship were measured, unhurried and precise. The only thing that might speak to the opposite, was the tension in his shoulders or the clench of his fist.

But if one were to look at his mind, they would see the panic he was desperately trying to smother.

Helpless.

That was how he felt, because no matter his determination to get to Mynock and grab the child, he couldn’t force time and space to bend any further to his will than it already was, a slave to the laws of lightspeed and how quickly it could get him to his destination.

His eyes flickered to the navicomputer. Three hours.

Three hours for whoever the Empire had paid to find you and the child.

Three hours where he sat imprisoned in this ship, waiting impatiently, and swearing on the Creed that if no more messages came through that comm telling him they’d been successful, he would double his efforts to find the child’s people. He would do anything so long as the Empire didn’t find him.

Din had never felt claustrophobic in hyperspace. On the contrary, hyperspace was the only place Din ever felt truly safe enough to rest, to remove his armor, to sleep. Now, he felt the seconds drag on, each one longer than the last and he fervently wished he had never sent the child away.

_His place is with me._

**_9 ABY, Mynock, Dandoran. 4 Hours Ago…_ **

You had escaped to the second floor of the practice not long after Kuiil had you repeat the escape plan if the child’s location was discovered, needing a moment to just sit in your own company and attempt to ground yourself.

It wasn’t working.

Every time you tried to concentrate of calming your nerves, a different inevitability reared its head and made you agonize over it for a few minutes before you managed to shove it to the back of your mind.

You sat on your bed, fingers toying with the frayed edges of the blanket, taking comfort in the familiar tactile experience. This blanket was no different now as it was this morning before the world turned on its head. It wasn’t much, but you took a modicum of comfort from that fact and worked on breathing deeply so as not to panic yourself again.

Years ago, one of the starfighter pilots had sat with you after your first experience in open warfare for hours, helping you to focus your mind on the present. To not linger on possibilities and self-doubt and only worry about what was before your eyes right this second and what you could do now, not later. It was invaluable advice and you hardly, if ever, hesitated in your job again.

Until tonight.

Until the moment a situation so vastly out of your control made you panic. You clucked your tongue at yourself in disappointment, you had dealt with way worse than this. At least you had time to plan this time, to prepare. Unlike on a battlefield when decisions were made in a split second with no room for thought.

Perhaps you panicked for that exact reason, you had _too_ much time to think and actually consider the possibility of failure. The last time you had time to ponder failure, was just after Alderaan had been destroyed and the Rebellion devastated.

You brushed your hands down your thighs, closing your eyes at another familiar texture; the soft stretchy material of the pants you favored for their comfort and durability. You pushed yourself up to stand and took the few steps to the window, eyes scanning what you could see of the streets in front of you in the dim light of dusk for anything that looked suspicious. You rolled your eyes, ninety percent of activity in Mynock looked suspicious; you were just asking to be paranoid now.

You didn’t even have the chance to laugh at yourself when there was a bang on the door and not for the first time that day, your blood froze.

You made your way out of your room and down the stairs quietly, noticing Kuiil and Biran both on their feet, watching the door. Once the Ugnaught had noticed you, he pointed to the child sitting on the settee, playing with the tassel of one of Biran’s hideous decorative cushions he insisted were the height of fashion on Naboo thirty years ago.

You looked back at Kuiil, and he gestured for you to take the child and return upstairs. You silently made your way down the last two steps, nearly jumping out of your skin when someone banged on the door again. Just as you reached the child and picked him up with a small shush when he cooed at you, you heard a voice coming from behind the steel door.

“Ol’ man Biran, you there? Got some questions for your girl about her Mandalorian friend.”

Shattered glass.

That same voice belonged to the handsy Twi’lek Mando had scared off four months ago. You had spent the following few weeks constantly looking over your shoulder, anticipating their return but it seemed that the members of Quai-Kisu were leaving you alone.

Until now, that is.

Kuiil and Biran both noticed the recognition on your face, the Ugnaught immediately rushing over to you.

“Go now.”

Your eyes widened as you shook your head.

“They know about the Mandalorian, _you need to run_.” He stressed.

“Don’t make me forget my manners…” the voice drawled behind the door, the grating laugh that followed devoid of any warmth and only seemed to promise pain.

Biran appeared beside Kuiil in the next moment, taking your hand between both of his frail ones, “Don’t freeze now. You’ve never frozen before. Get the child somewhere safe.” He said quietly, convincingly before his smile turned somewhat sad, “Knowing you was one of my life’s greatest honors, my dear.”

You didn’t even try to stop the well of tears from falling as you wrapped the Mirialan in a tight hug, “I’ll see you again, I promise.”

Biran didn’t respond, only rubbed your back soothingly, “You were never meant to be tied down in somewhere like Mynock so fly away child. Fly away and _live_.” He muttered, pressing an affectionate kiss to your forehead before you were being ushered back upstairs, grabbing your blaster as you threw one last glance down the stairs as both elderly males sat back down at the coffee table calmly, the small blaster Biran owned, kept concealed under his ugly as sin cushion.

You didn’t know that that would be the last time you saw either of them again.

You pushed your feelings aside as you ran back into your room and pushed the window open, they would do you no good here. Breathing slowly, you imagined you were back in the Rebellion, about to run out into hostile territory in an effort to save the men who fought for your side.

You picked the child back up from where you had set him down on your bed. You wished you had something to hold him to you to free up your arm given how you planned to get out, but you had to settle for unzipping your fitted jacket and place him in it. You checked he was secure once you zipped the jacket back up, bounced up and down as quietly as you could to test that he would stay. The child seemed happy enough, resting his cheek on the swell of your breast. You shook your head, males.

After you had secured the child, you first made sure that the gang members at the door couldn’t see you. From your height, you couldn’t see them and assumed they had stood into the porch Biran had built to allow for shelter should anyone be waiting outside to be treated. You didn’t have much time to weigh the possibility any further, because the banging at the door soon turned violently loud and you quickly threw your leg over the ledge of the open window.

As luck would have it, living in one of the only two-story buildings on this street was more beneficial than you originally thought when you got back to your room. Most of the buildings that were connected in Mynock were narrow and had flat, gently sloped roofs. Even though it wasn’t the least bit safe, it meant that you could grab onto the sturdy sign for the practice that hung just outside your window and hopefully propel yourself onto the roof of the neighboring building. By your estimation, the distance from the sign was only about a meter across, and you hoped to the Maker that gravity didn’t weigh more on Dandoran than on your home planet. With islands connected by numerous levels of bridges, jumping from one level across to another was a game children often played to test their bravery on Pamarthe. Who knew it would serve you over twenty years later?

Checking once more on the child, you bit the bullet and grabbed hold of the metal bar that held the swing sign and cursed how much heavier your adult body was to when you were a child as your second hand swung up to hold onto it.

You exhaled sharply, your arms immediately feeling the burn of holding your weight and you looked down your body to mentally gauge the drop. Looking over your shoulder you also caught a few curious shopkeepers’ glance at you as they closed up for the evening and your heart thrummed thinking the gang might notice.

It seemed however, that that was the least of your worries, as the groan of the front door giving in rose from the ground.

“Son of a mudscuffer…” you panted, swinging your body to the right once, twice, before closing your eyes as you propelled yourself the short distance across. The drop down though, made a scream catch in your throat before your hand found purchase on the ledge of the neighboring building. A small whine as you jostled the baby when you hit the wall made you murmur an apology while you used whatever strength you had to pull yourself up. Once on the flat surface of the roof, you just lay there on your back momentarily and panted until your heart stopped hammering in your chest. You lifted a hand to stroke the back of the baby’s head through your jacket, hoping you didn’t hurt him with the jump but the sudden sound of blaster fire from the practice had you scrambling to your feet.

Every instinct told you to go and help your friend, but just like your last meeting with this particular gang, you knew when you were outnumbered and outmatched. Instead, you turned and began running and didn’t stop until your lungs began to burn, and you paused, looking down at the alleyways below before you noticed a dumpster that was open and mostly full.

Hardly pleasant, but a softer landing than the unforgiving ground.

You checked to make sure the alleyway was empty before dropping from the single-story roof and into the soft, if smelly trash that filled the dumpster. Keeping your arm wrapped around the child in your jacket, you pulled yourself out and once again took off at a run, taking the longer, yet less travelled way to the south port. It wasn’t very far away, but when trying to remain invisible while it was only dusk made you have to slow down and take your time.

It wasn’t clear how many people knew about the child if any. The Twi’lek wanted to talk to you about the Mandalorian. But it was too much of a coincidence to not be about the little green alien, and you weren’t going to stick around to find out the contrary.

**_9 ABY, Mynock, Dandoran. 2 Hours Ago…_ **

Din landed the gunship behind a labyrinth of cargo containers, destined for the many other cities that dotted the planet. The height of them stacked on top of each other completely concealed the ship but it appeared for all its’ ability to be a brilliant hiding space, the droids that managed the port were quick to notice organic lifeforms.

“Organic. Article 48 of the Dandoronian Nautical Transport Legislation states that no organic lifeforms may be present in the cargo area. Return to the harbor at once.” The Z-58 security droid approached the ship and Din growled to himself as he left the ship, what else could make his day worse?

Fucking droids.

“Organic. Article 48 of the---”

“Okay, okay I’m leaving.” Din snapped at the dull piece of second-hand tin as he engaged his jetpack and shot up into the sky, leaving the droid to look up after him momentarily before continuing back the way it came.

Din scanned the vast area of containers and ships loading and unloading them for distribution, his heat scanner telling him that apart from the droids, it didn’t seem like there were any other lifeforms at the port this time of night.

“Dank ferrick Kuiil, where are you?” He muttered to himself, typing a short code into the control panel on his vambrace as he cruised at a high altitude to keep vision optimal. A single light flickered on his vambrace and he followed its’ flickering like a tracking fob. As the blinking increased, he knew he was on the right track until at last, he saw the _Razor Crest_ hidden amongst the containers as the Imperial gunship was. He didn’t need to check inside to know neither Kuiil nor the child were inside which meant he could only assume Kuiil had followed his advice and sought you out.

How he was regretting mentioning you, but he still couldn’t fault the logic that at least he knew where to start looking instead of wandering aimlessly as he might have had he not told Kuiil to seek you out. He took off again into the sky, soaring as low as possible this time to keep sight of him minimal while also maintaining a good speed.

He came to a halt however, when he reached the edge of town, several curls of black smoke coming from the main streets giving him a sharp tug of worry. Making the decision instantly, he swung around the perimeter until he was able to land close to the spaceport he usually landed in instead.

He kept to the growing shadows that stretched across the city, he didn’t need any light with the advantages his helmet offered him. Crouching down, he noticed several stormtroopers hovering around the entrance to the spaceport. He could count three, two leaning against either side of the main entrance while the other stretched his arms over his head. Krayt spit, he thought with Gideon dead, it would take a little longer for the Imps to reorganize themselves.

“Can’t imagine he survived Nevarro. What’s the point of waiting here?” The transponder technology in his helmet picked up and fed into the commlink by his ear once he had activated it.

“Will you shut up? Horne said it was a system-wide call. We do what he says.” One of the other two snapped in response as he took out his blaster to examine it, aiming it at random targets, “Tracking beacon says it’s here, so if the Mandalorian is going to come anywhere, it’ll be here to collect the quarry.”

He tightened his hold on his blaster before he stood from the shadows silently, the three still engrossed in their own conversation to notice him in their peripheral,

“Last I checked, Horne was on his way to the girls place with the Quai-Kisu. Seems to have been the only person who spoke to a Mandalorian recently from what he said.” He spit out a laugh, “He’ll get her to talk in no time. And think, at least we don’t have to get our hands dirty, leave that to the scum here.”

Din didn’t even try to silence his footfalls now as anger swelled in his chest at the sentiment.

“Y’think he’s dead then?” The third stormtrooper asked, head tipped to look at the other two, “’Cause I heard he’s like a phantom. Impossible to kill.”

“Like hell he could survive two entire squadrons and whatever other surprises Moff Gideon had in store.” The one that was stretching moments before spoke with misplaced arrogance.

The third was silent for a moment as Din sauntered over and it was just by chance that they hadn’t spotted him yet.

“But what happens if he does come here?” He asked again.

“You die.”

His growled words were distorted by the modulator as he shot each of the three, their heavy bodies dropping before they could even reach for their own weapons. Din left them where they lay, making his way quickly towards the main streets where he saw more activity and the reasons for the smoke.

All around, random shops and buildings had been broken into, the blackened edges of gaping holes in walls speaking of explosives. He couldn’t see any Imps, only residents scrambling out of their destroyed homes or into the homes of friends while green sleeved sentients stalked through the wreckages.

Din didn’t spare a glance at two as they caught sight of him, shooting them without mercy before he took off at a run towards the practice.

He had to take down three more of the gang members before he came up short, the largest plume of smoke curling from the inferno engulfing the home he had sat in not four months previously. Bile rose in his throat, but he pushed it down as he ran forward and tried to look in through the open door. Smoke billowed from the entry but the flames themselves seemed to be upstairs.

Images of his _ad’ika_ coughing and cowering from the flames forced him into the house, his night vision the only thing that helped his sight through the smoke and even then, it wasn’t by much. There were two members of the Quai-Kisu just inside the doorway as well as an Imperial officer, but as a cough wracked his body from the burning in his lungs, he saw two other bodies deeper inside the now destroyed living room.

Din looked down on the bodies of Kuiil and Biran with no shortage of guilt, knowing they lay there because of his decision. He knelt down by Kuiil and placed a hand over his own where it lay across his stomach, the blaster wound on his chest hardly visible and if Din only squinted, it merely looked like the two males were asleep. He stayed a moment longer before he was pushing himself back to his feet.

There was no sign of you or the kid anywhere. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign. He couldn’t detect anything else in the house and he soon had to escape back out the way he came, ragged coughs leaving him as clean air hit his lungs when he pulled in deep swallows of it.

But for the fact that he looked up, he would never have noticed the only open window on the second floor. Following a hunch, he engaged his jetpack once more to land on the roof by the practice – as close as he could get with the fire licking out from the open window – and noticed the pressed dust and sand. Compared to the rest of the roof, this one area looked disturbed and as he knelt down to scan for any organic matter, he came across a single strand of hair.

Picking it up, he felt a relieved grin tug at the corner of his mouth, how on earth did you manage you get up here? You were living up to that image of a sand panther Biran had painted of you months ago.

“One with nine lives hopefully.” He muttered, following the pattern of pressed dirt and sand that he recognized as footprints across the rooftops of Mynock until they disappeared.

Din paused, retraced his steps a few meters and scanned the rooftop again. No, he was right. The footprints stopped here. There hadn’t been any other sets on the roof apart from his own, so he had been under the impression no one had followed you. That was until he looked over the ledge and noted the trail of footprints leading further into the alleys.

 _Towards the harbor._ He realized as he mapped the location in his mind.

**_9 ABY, Mynock, Dandoran. Present time - Sometime after midnight…_ **

You stayed in the relative safety of that abandoned doorway for longer than you were comfortable with. Every time you convinced yourself now was the time to move, a noise or passing gang member would make you recoil back into the darkness, hoping it would hide you both from unfriendly eyes.

You checked your blaster in the meantime. It was the first time you were using it in years, and it was obvious the disuse and neglect were coming back to bite you in the behind. Maker, it took two pulls of the trigger for you to actually shoot the Kubaz less than an hour ago. The first shot jammed before it finally released and took down the Quai-Kisu member.

You had heard the moment others had found his body. Your ears strained to pick up on anything that might lead them to you. It seemed though, that the Kubaz wasn’t the only casualty of the night. The gang members who found him merely swore and reported something into their comms before taking off down one of the other intersecting alleys, away from you thankfully.

You tried to squash the guilt that threatened to overwhelm you. The empire wanted the child and had utilized their ties to the Quai-Kisu to get him. But the child couldn’t have been the only reason for this takeover. You had noticed in the last year or so, the shift in the power dynamic between the gangs in Mynock. It started quietly enough, smaller gangs assimilating into the larger Quai-Kisu. Then came the kidnappings, the disappearances of other gang leaders and before anyone even knew it; the Quai-Kisu had – in all but name – stepped into the vacant shoes the Hutts had left behind as the main power in the city. Now, it seemed, the gang were using their connection to the imperial remnants to solidify that power.

It was a win-win for some of the most debased people in the galaxy and once again, innocents were suffering for it.

When you hadn’t heard anything close after a few minutes more, you slipped out from behind the doorway. The vulnerability at being out in the open was a sensation that made your skin hum in ways you hadn’t experienced since the Rebellion, and honestly, you didn’t miss it. Moving as quickly as you could, it wasn’t long until you came across an issue.

A crossroads.

Now, you weren’t lost. You knew exactly the direction you had to go, reciting in your mind Kuiil’s exact directions once more. The issue was the two gang members lazily pacing around the center.

Scouts. Your mind hissed as one caught your eye, one of the same humans that had approached you in the marketplace. Your eyes widened and you lifted your blaster without a thought,

“YOU---”

The shot you fired exposed your location and had only managed to catch the man in the shoulder,

“ _BITCH.”_ He finished his sentence with pained yelp as his hand grabbed his wounded shoulder, a second shot skimming past your ear and making you duck to avoid being hit. You pointed your own blaster at the second man who was firing rapidly in your direction. Your only protection being the darkness of the alley as you pressed your back against a dumpster. You turned on your hands and knees to quietly crawl around the back of the dumpster, using the cursing and blaster fire to mask any sounds you might make and, once you could see them both clearly enough, you aimed and fired.

The second man fell like a sack of potatoes.

The first, injured man spit out a curse, his good arm the one that had been wounded and took off down one of the other unlit alleys, barking something into the commlink at his wrist.

You didn’t have time to worry over the fact that one of them got away, taking off at a run in the right direction, hoping against hope that you wouldn’t run into anyone else.

Then again, when had hope ever really worked for you anyway?

***

He had picked up your trail easily enough once he knew what footprints yours were, but your meandering route made him question if you were lost, or just being smart about getting to the harbor without being seen.

He had warred with the idea of simply taking off to the sky and scouting you from above, but he didn’t want to risk being seen or directing any enemies on the ground to your location. So, he settled for what he knew best. Hunting.

His cape rustling slightly in the night breeze was the only sound he made as he rounded another corner, blaster clocked and ready to fire at a moment notice as he looked around from where his back was pressed to the wall.

Nothing.

Except for the large Gand that was running in the same direction, the garbled, almost choked sound of its language hitting Din’s ears as it spoke into the comm. Din had learned several languages over the years, but Gandish was not one of them. The way the alien jerked its heavy-artillery blaster into position while it knelt down told him whatever he had said, wasn’t in your or the kids benefits.

Quickly, he lifted his arm to shoot his grappling hook, yanking the Gand back once it had wrapped around its’ leg, throwing off its’ aim and the barrage of shots went haywire; directed up towards the sky as opposed to where it had been aimed.

Din only saw the quickest flash of a form, the flick of your hair catching his attention once more and relief washed through him as he watched you sprint off in the direction of the harbor. You didn’t look back.

The Gand let out a slew of words in that same language, drawing Din’s attention back to it. He drew his blaster quickly, the smaller size in comparison to the Gand’s rather large and hostile weapon allowing him to pull the trigger first and killed another gang member in his pursuit of his _ad’ika._

Not wasting any time after seeing you, he took off running in the direction you came, his heart in his mouth as he watched you dodge another blaster shot from the several beings who had taken off after you once you broke cover.

His eyes narrowed on the large Tei’lek who had taken the shot, his laughter familiar as it carried on the wind to Din, his speed eating up the distance between him and you and heard, rather than saw the wicked throwing knife slice across your arm, the yelp that left you a combination of pain and surprise.

Din growled to himself, the piece of bantha shit was toying with you. He could have easily made that throw and incapacitated you, but instead, he gave you a taste of pain to let you know what was coming, what was chasing you down. What would happen once he caught you.

Din quickly engaged his jetpack, the sound drawing some of the party’s attention before he landed between your retreating form and the gang.

They came up short and the look of surprise on the Twi’lek soon melted into a wicked grin.

“Little late to the party, Mando. Thought we might have had a bit of quality time with your girl before you got here.” He rasped, the taunt in his crimson eyes was obvious.

No one baited a Mandalorian.

No one who wanted to live, that was.

Din didn’t bother responding, lifting his blaster to take a shot at the Twi’lek but the fucker was quicker than his bulk would suggest, diving to the side and letting one of his lackeys take the hit instead.

Oh well. One down, six to go, he thought flippantly.

That first shot spurred everyone else present to attack.

Keeping focused, Din managed to take down two more of the gang, green around the ears but still a threat.

Four to go…

Arrogance permeated the pavilion, four to one, good odds to a gang of cut throats of traffickers. Only thing was, Din was the only one who ever realized that the odds were in his favor most of the time. His shoulder was thrown back as a blaster shot ricocheted against his beskar pauldron, but a quick step back steadied himself and he sent a shot back towards the Twi’lek.

That shot went wide as the large arms of a Trandoshan locked around him, the Weequay taking the opportunity to swing its’ vibroaxe against Din’s middle. He tensed his stomach and, using the Trandoshan as a counterweight, pushed his legs up to kick the Weequay in the chest, sending it, himself and the Trandoshan to the ground.

In the confusion where the Trandoshan’s grip on him loosened slightly, he dipped to grab the vibroblade hidden in his boot and brought it back viciously over his shoulder and into the neck of his assailant. Blood splattered across him as he cut through the artery and the wet, choking screams of the Trandoshan filled the air until he drowned or died from blood loss.

Din didn’t care. He had already unleashed his flamethrower at the Weequay charging at him for a second go, the charred remains falling at his feet.

He turned immediately towards the last two only to curse when he saw them running into the shipyard, the Twi’lek sending him an evil smirk as he disappeared after you once more.

“Fierfek!” He panted, taking off after them and into the maze of container units, his energy already feeling depleted after three days of no sleep and endless fighting.

Once inside the shipyard, he shot the security droid who tried to command him to leave, using his vambrace to set his helmet to heat signal. It allowed him to stalk the last two gang members as they hunted you and the kid, but he was certain he could dispose of them before they go close.

***

You pressed your back against one of the containers, your head falling back against it as your lungs burned from running so fast and so far. You could still hear them following you. A clash had distracted them long enough for you to get a head start into the port but now you were hopelessly lost after one wrong turn made in haste and fear.

Maker, you couldn’t even tell which direction you had come from let alone which way to go. You could run right into them if you made the wrong decision and you were just so exhausted from running and hiding and fighting for what felt like days when in reality, it had only been a few hours.

The cut on your upper arm throbbed slightly, but it was shallow from what you could tell. The pain actually helped to keep you focused.

The baby squirmed a little, sick of being cooped up in your jacket and wanting to be out.

“Not much longer, little one. We’re nearly there. Then we’ll find your dad.” You whispered before the sounds of shouting and blaster fire echoed around the containers. You scrambled to your feet and started off in the direction away from the noise.

The containers stood so high, stacked as they were, and you were hopelessly lost. Did you go left or right at that last turn? Maker, it was pitch dark so you couldn’t even use the sun to guide you. Going with your gut, but knowing it was a guess, you took a left and hoped as you ran.

You kept running even as the noise seemed to quieten, your breath and pounding heart sounding much too loud for your nerves.

A hand on your shoulder had you shrieking and turning around to strike whoever it was with the butt of your blaster before aiming at them, ready to fire.

“Bantha balls, put the blaster down, woman!”

The modulated voice washed over you like the ocean after sitting too long in the sun.

“Mando?” you croaked, voice cracking from being so dry and unaccustomed to speaking over a whisper for several hours. You dropped the blaster and leaned back against the closest container, the energy draining from you when you realized that he was alive, and he was here.

“Thank the Maker.” You muttered, watching as Mando turned quickly to fire two more shots into the dark, picking up noise only he seemed to be able to hear.

He turned back to you when he heard you sit down heavily on the ground, catching your breath as you stared up at him, terrified that if you looked away he would disappear and you would be left alone again, lost in this maze, hunted by flesh traffickers and mercenaries.

Your eyes drank him in, parched for his strong presence. Someone who wasn’t trying to kill you.

He looked different, you thought mindlessly, your exhausted mind switching off from the danger that still surrounded you. Shining beskar had replaced the faded durasteel armor he wore a few months. Blood dripped and stained the right side of his armor and you wondered how he was still standing with that much blood loss. Unless it wasn’t his blood, of course.

You would blame the adrenaline and stress of the day later when you absentmindedly thought how attractive he looked in that moment with new armor, even if it was bloodied and his blaster raised as he surrounded you and the child with an arm to the container above you to shield you from any errant fire.

You don’t think you blinked once when he clicked his tongue and looked down at you.

“Up.” He growled, his grip like iron as it wrapped around your bicep and made you hiss when he came in contact with your cut. His grip slackened a little, but still held you up as the impassive visor ran over you, noticing your wince.

“You’re hurt. The kid---”

“Fine, we’re both fine.” You held up a hand to stop him, shaking yourself back into full consciousness and pointed to the child who was now cooing in happiness at seeing his father, oblivious to the danger. You could hear the relief in the sigh that left Mando and he stroked the tip of one large ear in an act more affectionate and gentler than you had ever seen from the warrior.

“I told him you would come.” You muttered, letting the joy on the child’s face wash over you and smiled tiredly yourself. You could feel Mando’s eyes on you, but you kept your eyes down, content just to bask in his strong presence, the safety that blanketed you when you were next to him.

“You---”

Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the approaching sound of footfall and shouting.

“I think it’s time I returned the favor, don't you? Hold onto the kid.”

You blinked up at him owlishly before he stooped slightly to grip one arm under your knees and the other behind your back to lift you effortlessly into his arms. Your arms instinctively wrapped around the rough duraweave and slightly softer material of his cape at his neck. His fingers dug into the flesh of your thigh and you knew there would be bruises but you couldn’t find it in you to care.

Because suddenly, you were _soaring._

A gasp left you and your grip tightened when the rush of wind at your face increased, the containers shrinking in size the higher he climbed into the sky before you lost sight of them completely, hidden amongst the clouds.

Using the hand under your back, he strained slightly to reach his vambrace enough to click something, a small red light flashing and directing him somewhere. You had no idea where, but anywhere was better than that maze and you felt yourself relax against his shoulder as the adrenaline of the last few hours slowly began to seep out of your body.

Scarce minutes later and he was landing. You recognized the fossil from years ago and were mildly surprised it was still running. Setting you on your feet, he kept a hand on your elbow as he ushered you up the ramp and into the hull.

“Up.” He repeated, nodding towards the ladder and you stumbled up before feeling him brush past you and make his way into the cockpit, immediately beginning the take-off procedures when he sat in the pilot’s chair.

“Sit.” He barked back at you, and you fell into the closest seat and – too tired to bristle at his tone and snap at him – pulled the zipper of your jacket down so the child could sit more freely on your lap.

The familiar hum of a ship filled the cockpit and you closed your eyes in relief as it climbed higher and higher into the atmosphere before even that fell away to leave only stars and the vacuum of space around you.

You swallowed thickly, vaguely aware that you should still be on Dandoran. The Mandalorian was alive so there was no need for you to take off in his ship with his son. But you were so tired and couldn’t even raise a question as he entered hyperspace, the slight pressure you always felt for the first moment or two pushing you further towards sleep while the child looked up at you like one of the fawns on Pamarthe. You smiled at the recognition and lifted your hand to stroke the child’s ear as you had seen Mando do so earlier, assuming he liked it.

You didn’t notice the helmet turned towards you at your ministrations, but you did notice the sigh that filled the cockpit a few moments later. You lifted your eyes as he stared ahead of him, armor reflecting the distorted light of stars in hyperspace.

“Give him here.” His low baritone was thick with some unnamed emotion, turning in the pilot’s chair, and you watched as the little green alien used your leg as a climbing pole to reach the ground and run to his father. Mando picked the child up in such a way that made your chest ache, tucking him into his arm as he turned back towards the dashboard, muttering to him quietly in that language you couldn’t place. Despite his growls, Mando was always quiet but never more so than when you heard him talking to his son, the relief clear even if you couldn’t understand his words.

You unbuckled your seatbelt to stand when you caught his helmet turning towards you slightly.

“I’m sorry.”

And then he turned back to the child, handing him something small and round that you only caught a quick glimpse of.

You were aware that something had changed in the Mandalorian you knew. He seemed tired, burdened even and the weight of his words were not lost on you. On Klatooine, in his ship, in the alley by Biran’s practice… he had always simply thanked you, but this seemed different.

_I’m sorry…_

You couldn’t be sure, the filter on his voice masking the nuances of his speech, but you could have been certain that you heard something akin to regret lace those two words. Not merely regret for what happened, but for whatever happened next. You couldn’t know how your life would change when a Ugnaught arrived seeking help to protect a child.

You could have said no.

Kuiil didn’t leave you in the dark about what you signed onto when you agreed to help.

His apology was insulting, but you weren’t going to argue the point. It was obvious you were both too exhausted – mentally and physically – to debate and argue over anything like who was to blame and independent choice.

So instead, you asked him a question; one that you had no idea was even more complex than a simple argument…

“What do we do now?”

The question hung in the air, filling it with a tension that was stifling.

Only then did you realize – despite your earlier confidence – that the Mandalorian didn't know what to do. He didn’t have a plan at all.

 _Well fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> djarinsbeskar.tumblr.com
> 
> Mando'a Translation:
> 
> Ad'ika - son, little one.  
> Aruetii - traitor.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so friends, we begin our rapid descent into filth. I have to admit, whenever I write anything remotely sexual, especially in a fic for the first time, I get so flustered worrying that people will think it’s too crude or too much. But then I remembered that this is exactly why y’all are here and I felt much better about throwing away any inhibitions and embracing the filth and self-indulgence of this fic. 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Injury detail, injury treatment, language, masturbation (male and female).  
> *****************************************************************************************************************************

_What do we do now?_

Three months later… and you still hadn’t received an answer.

After the mess on Mynock, the devastation at the loss of both Biran and Kuiil and the mystery that still surrounded the child, you had been drained, physically and emotionally.

So, after your question had received nothing but silence in answer and being too tired to demand one, you had holed yourself away in one of the only private areas of the _Razor Crest_ , a storage area adjacent to the cockpit. Half of it was taken up by the slabs of carbonite the Mandalorian kept his quarries in, but there was space enough to sit and try to work through the slew of emotions you had been bombarded with in only twenty-four hours.

You had scoffed, resting your head back against the unforgiving metal of ships interior; twenty-four hours ago, you had been lamenting the loss of adventure, of some sort of elusive fulfilment. _Once again, caught up in thinking the grass is greener on the other island…_ It was a flaw you were beginning to recognize in yourself and you weren’t happy about it.

An incessant longing for an unknown goal.

You wanted to make a difference when you were stuck on Pamarthe, so you joined the Rebellion and it had given you a purpose.

After the Empire fell, and your skills as a combat medic became obsolete, you chased that same desire for purpose back to the Outer Rim in the hopes that altruistic work in a voluntary clinic would somehow satisfy that longing.

Then the New Republic pulled back the curtain and shown that in essence, things had not really changed, that you had somehow wasted years achieving something that suddenly felt hollow. And it was unfair. Unfair because you _knew_ it wasn’t hollow, you knew the galaxy was in a better place than it was before you joined the Rebellion and yet you felt your life was lacking once more.

Biran had soothed the jagged edges of a life that hadn’t been able to fit in any one particular place and – for a time – you had been content with working in his practice. Until the moment you weren’t. When the gaping maw of dissatisfaction crept back into the corner of your eyes, making you agitated and wishing for more once again.

You seemed to have gotten your wish the day the Mandalorian had entered your life and brought with him an unyielding ability to take life by the jaws and roar right back at it. He seemed to create his own purpose, the child a testament to that, and even if you had no way of knowing the innermost workings of his mind, you were fascinated by it, by him.

You spent so long seeking a purpose when you should have been creating one of your own instead.

It was a sobering realization as you sat alone beside the generator room on the cold metal of the _Razor Crest’s_ storage room, nothing to show for that wasted time but a bloody arm and a dead friend.

The tears came then, for Biran, for yourself, for the child, even for Mando. You had buried your face in your arms and allowed yourself to grieve.

You had no idea what to do.

***

A little less than two days after your hasty escape from Dandoran, you entered the cockpit again sheepishly.

If you hadn’t heard the Mandalorian moving around the ship, climbing the ladder down to the hold or the hiss of the refreshers hydraulic door opening and closing, you would have thought he hadn’t moved an inch since you were last there.

You had had a severe talking to yourself over the last day and had laid to rest a portion of the self-loathing you had been wallowing in, realizing it wouldn’t do you any good to stay fixated on things you could no longer change. It had given you a measure of peace. Self-awareness was not always a flattering reflection, but with it, you were able to see what needed to be worked on.

The slightest incline of his helmet to the right was the only indication he gave you that he was aware of your presence, the child cooing happily from the seat beside him when he saw you.

You had taken the same seat as before, letting the child clamor up onto your lap to make room for you both. Silence still reigned and you were suddenly so aware of how much you relied on external white noise during your last meetings with him; the murmur of a bustling crowd, Biran’s jokes or simply your attention being focused on an injury. Without such distractions, the Mandalorian’s silence was deafening.

You knew he didn’t converse easily, that much was obvious from his abrupt statements and cantankerous nature whenever you saw him. But you had never _felt_ the lack of cues – physical or verbal – until you sat in his ship with him alone. It felt like you were being asked to treat a patient when you could neither see where they were hurt or listen to their reaction; their breathing or any pain they might be in. You were adrift in this ship and for the first time since you saw him braced against that alley wall on Klatooine, you felt a jolt of nervousness race up your spine.

“How’s your arm?”

The question was spoken quietly but still felt too harsh on your ears. Maybe you were just feeling overly sensitive, you couldn’t tell at this point. All you knew was that the sound of his voice was jarring when only moments before you felt as though the silence was drowning you.

“It’s fine.” You muttered after a moment, “It wasn’t deep.”

“You know I would have---” he started before he cut himself off, the frustration evident in the huff he exhaled afterwards. No, Mando was definitely unaccustomed to speaking with you when the bickering and banter that provided you both with a safe wall to hide behind was stripped away.

But you knew what he was trying to say; _I would have taken care of it._

Your chest filled with a soft warmth at the thought. But you didn’t mention it. Instinct told you that he would get defensive or spooked, like one of the regal crested stags native to Pamarthe. Massive and intimidating but would bolt at a loud noise or sudden movement. You felt that if you acknowledged the emotion, the tentative willingness he had tried to express to dress a wound for you, he would immediately throw up more walls, more barricades around himself.

You appreciated the sentiment none the less.

He seemed to appreciate the fact that you didn’t bring it up too, because a few silent minutes later, he spoke again.

“I don’t need to tell you that Mynock isn’t safe for you anymore.”

You looked up from where you had started playing with the child on your lap, simply passing his small metal ball to him before he handed it back to you. He seemed to take immense joy out of the game, delighted to show you his toy but equally excited to have it back in his hands in the next moment.

Mando kept his face forward as he spoke, so all you could see of him was the breadth of his shoulders where he had crossed his arms across his chest and the back of his helmet as it leaned back against the headrest of his chair.

“…But I’ll take you to whatever planet you want.”

“Oh.” Was your pitiful excuse for an answer. Pitiful, because you were slightly embarrassed that amidst your self-reflection, you hadn’t once considered your next move. You frowned. You always had a plan, but now? You had no idea where to go.

You mulled over your next words carefully.

“Can I think about it? I have to… figure out where would be best.” You continued when he offered nothing in response. It was true; you had no credits, no clothes, you didn’t even have a toothbrush you realized grimly. You had to be smart about where you went next if you were going to survive.

You ran through the list of friends and contacts you still had from the Rebellion, pilots and other medics who would no doubt help you in a pinch without question. You could go home, the clans on Pamarthe were loyal to a fault but your mind immediately shut that idea down as a wave of nausea washed over you, a combination of homesickness and fear making you feel slightly ill. No, you hadn’t been home since before the Rebellion, and you weren’t about to break that streak now.

You were so absorbed in your own thoughts, that you didn’t notice Mando’s quick glance at you over his shoulder. He had never seen you look less put together. Hair a disaster, clothes bloodstained from your arm and slightly sooty from the fires. Your face was clean, and so were your hands so you had obviously washed up at some point. You were a mess, honestly. But he was relieved to see the same fire that lit your eyes remained if a little subdued, the underlying steel of intelligence that glinted like beskar was still there. He knew you had seen worse than what happened on Mynock, knew you were tougher than to let it break you, but his own guilt over sending the child to you aggravated his worry that you might be… altered, changed, _different_ because of what he did.

Obviously, his worry was misplaced.

He might wear beskar armor, but you were the one who had a spine of it.

“Let me know when you figure it out.”

He spoke slowly, as if perhaps, he shouldn’t say those words. Their ambiguity was dangerous, leaving a back door to interpretation, but your appreciative smile he caught in the reflection of the wraparound transparisteel of the _Razor Crests’_ observation viewport made him forget momentarily why ambiguity was such a bad thing in the first place.

***

That was months ago.

Somehow, neither of you mentioned your destination again. You never told him where you wanted to go, and he never asked if you had decided.

The fact was almost dangerously acknowledged when Mando landed the _Razor Crest_ to refuel a week later, when he had made the offhanded remark that you needed clothes and whatever else you might need as you travelled because, as he put it, “a man shouldn’t’ be told he can’t access half of his ship just because you’re waiting for your clothes to dry” and handed you a pouch of credits as he pushed by you gently to get to the entrance of the ship.

He could have asked you then where you planned to go, it was the perfect segue into that conversation, but after a tense moment when he stood at the top of the open ramp on his way to find work to tie them over until he started taking Guild jobs again, he straightened his shoulders and simply nodded to the child,

“Take care of the kid while I’m gone.”

That change in topic seemed to put the idea of you leaving to bed and you never brought it up again.

Not when you returned with several sets of clothes, feminine products, medical supplies, and foodstuffs for the ship on Ryloth.

Not when he brought back a thin sleep mat on Lothal with only a grunt in response to the thanks you had offered him after he had noticed you rubbing out a kink in your shoulder the day before.

Not when ‘I won’t be long’ replaced the stiff order of ‘take care of the kid’ thrown over his shoulder whenever he left you both alone, taking the time now to stroke the child’s long ear as you held him in your arms, feeling his eyes on you as he spoke.

No… the two of you had fallen into a delicate, if slightly hesitant routine; one that didn’t involve you leaving the Mandalorian or his child.

 _Next time,_ it appeared, did not end in goodbye.

***

Adjusting to life on a ship again had been both easy and difficult.

Having spent a portion of your life sleeping in hard, cramped spaces with a number of other rebels, living on the _Razor Crest_ was not as difficult as one might think. It wasn’t idea, Maker no. But there was running water (even if it was constantly recycled), something of a galley (kitchen was too generous a term, but there was a single nanowave ring and small cooling chamber) and somewhere soft to rest your head at night (even if your pillow was just a bunched-up blanket).

The areas you struggled with predominantly, could be summed up in two words: boredom and privacy.

You were used to spending twelve hours or more a day on your feet treating patients. Complacency and downtime were not in your repertoire, and while you can admit that you took advantage of the rest for the first week or two, you soon found yourself getting agitated and itching to do something.

The child proved to be an excellent distraction when he wasn’t holed away in the cockpit with the Mandalorian. While he was a darling little bogwing who fussed extraordinarily little, he needed constant vigilance. You learned very quickly that those doe-eyes hid a proclivity for mischief you had only glimpsed at back in Mynock. If you didn’t keep one eye on him at all times, you would lose sight of him only to find him in the cooling chamber looking for food or Maker forbid, in the weapons chamber.

Apart from keeping up with the child, you had taken to cataloguing the medical knowledge you had swimming in your mind on an empty datapad you had found in the storage area by the galley one day. You lamented the loss of the stacks of datapads you had collected over the years to further your knowledge and keep up to date with the latest medical advances, so you took it upon yourself to organize a one-stop-shop for all the information you had accumulated. It was antiquated given the knowledge was already in your head, but it filled the time, nonetheless.

Regarding privacy however, it wasn’t that you didn’t have any.

You had flatly refused to take Mando’s bunk when he had thrown the offer to you soon after Ryloth, and instead took it upon yourself to reorganize the holds setup. The small alcove by the galley that kept excess inventory of food, ammunition, blankets, and medical supplies was relocated to the storage area outside the generator room on the same level of the cockpit. The generators themselves had been too noisy to sleep beside so, despite being a larger area, you had settled the sleep mat down in the now empty alcove across from where the crates Mando used as a table and chairs was set. You didn’t need a whole lot of space while you slept, so it suited you fine. You had spent years sleeping on ships so a somewhat soft mat – however thin – was all you needed to get a good night sleep.

Rather, it was your feeling of invading the Mandalorian’s privacy that you struggled with. Your unwitting shipmate was a large, somewhat stifling presence in the beginning, and you felt an illogical imposition on his life before growing more accustomed to living with him after several weeks.

***

It was as you got used to him though, that your troubles began.

After six weeks of travelling on the _Razor Crest,_ you had learned several things about the Mandalorian.

One, that despite the ship being as small as it was with three – read; two plus a pint-sized gremlin – people living in it, Mando could be elusive and you could easily go days without seeing him and even longer without hearing him speak. Whatever progress you had made previously during your encounters in getting him to talk only seemed to apply in small doses. You found yourself growing used to silence and adjusting to speaking softly without realizing it, your normal speaking voice sounding too loud even to your own ears.

Two, for all you did see of him, you had never once seen him without every stitch of armor on him. Beskar wasn’t light and you knew he had to remove it sometimes to shower and sleep and eat, but you never heard even a whisper of metal clattering as he took it off or put it back on. The only thing you ever heard that would suggest he ever took his armor off, was the sound of the water in the refresher as it ran down his body. Mando only showered when he was certain you and the kid were both asleep, a habit you had picked up on only when the sound of the spray pulled you from unconsciousness for the fifth night in a row. The simple sound of the water and the occasional splash as he rinsed his hair – if he had hair – or body clean of soap immediately pushed tiredness and any hope of sleep away, which led you to fact number three.

That your attraction to the Mandalorian was growing, rather than dissipating, the longer you were around him. Whatever attraction you had entertained on Mynock over the years was magnified when you were forced to live in such close proximity to the man each and every day. Perhaps it was because you didn’t have as much to focus your attentions on, but you suddenly felt hyperaware of his every movement whenever he was in your presence and each of those movements seemed more enticing than the last.

There was the time he was cleaning his blasters.

Mando had just entered hyperspace after finishing up a job on Sriluur and after a grumbled, “No, I did not see a Raquor’daan” after your tongue-in-cheek question upon his return, he returned to the hold after putting the ship on autopilot.

Unexpectedly, he pulled one of the durasteel crates out from beside the makeshift table instead of remaining in the cockpit, the sound of the crate dragging across the metal flooring making both you and the child startle while he took a heavy seat down and pulled out the blaster at his hip. Another two followed as he lay them out almost reverently on the table.

Given that his adopted father was staying down in the hold, the child very quickly lost interest in playing with you and his metal ball. He whined at you insistently until you placed him in the crab carapace that sat on the same table in front of the Mandalorian before taking your seat again to focus on the compilation of medication doses per age, race, and pre-existing condition on your datapad to keep yourself occupied.

“No.”

You were amused when Mando’s filtered voice stopped the kid from touching the blaster without the warrior even having to look up from where he was using a small pipe brush to clean out the barrel of the first blaster. The little bogwing only watched him as he slowly tried to take a small, but no doubt important part of the blaster that sat on the table closest to his small frame, waiting to be cleaned.

After a few moments of this back and forth between father and son, you recognized when the Mandalorian was beginning to lose patience. The clipped edge of his voice that usually took a lot longer to show itself whenever he spoke to the child. The deliberate turn of his helmet to look at him as he spoke. All tiny, insignificant things you were becoming aware of despite yourself.

“Okay buddy. Let’s play over here instead.” You reached across the table and picked him up before Mando reached his limit and sat back down with the child on your lap, a safe distance from the blasters and the child’s wandering claws. Mando didn’t say anything, his movements never faltering as he lifted the barrel up to the front of his T-visor, inspecting its interior for a few measured moments before he set it down and picked up the next piece, satisfied.

While the little bogwing was most certainly not impressed to have been removed from Mando’s side, you had discovered a secret weapon early on that you could pull out whenever the child became fussy. It was truly a lifesaver of a thing; one you thanked the Maker for every time it stopped a tantrum or soothed away a fear.

You simply pulled your hair over your shoulder and waited for the tell-tale widening of the child’s eyes before his clawed hand wrapped around a bunch of the strands. He was content to hold it, pull it occasionally and enjoy its’ texture and color. You flattered yourself that it was comforting to the child, but you knew nothing comforted him more than the cool steel of beskar under his cheek whenever Mando held him.

At the thought, your eyes shifted to the man in question, oil rag in hand as he gently ran it over each part of the disassembled blaster, slow in the drag down the exterior of the barrel and examining it regularly before continuing.

It was the first time your breath had caught looking at him.

The way he completed each task so meticulously made you feel like you were witnessing a ritual; there was something innately private and intimate about how the warrior took care of his weapons. Should you look away? Perhaps… but after a few monotonous weeks, your eyes drank in the sight, taking in far more than you would usually be aware of in such a mundane act. The dexterity of his gloved fingers as they ran over each part of the weapon, they way they expertly shifted to disassemble the other two blasters laid out on the table, as if with a simple touch, the steel fell apart to obey his wishes.

It was the first time you felt an image of him, a fantasy, brush against your mind.

A fleeting image of those same fingers running down your spine slowly, deliberate, and certain in their path. As experienced with handling a woman as he was when he handled a weapon. The brush of his knuckles down your sternum, along your cheek. The strength of his grip behind your neck or holding your hips down.

You startled, yelping as the child giggled when he yanked your hair after your momentary lapse in concentration.

The visor shifted slightly to look at you and you hoped the guilty look on your face didn’t tell him everything you had just imagined before he pointed at the child,

“Mind your manners, kid.” He rasped before turning back to his work.

The child cooed in delight, thinking all of this was a truly wonderful sport and pulled your hair again. You laughed at his antics, slightly embarrassed as your yelp had been drawn out in surprise as opposed to pain. You didn’t think the child was even capable of inflicting pain; even at his most excited, he never pulled your hair hard and it softened your heart to him further.

The Mandalorian only sighed in your peripheral, pushing himself to his feet and making his way around the table. Those fingers you had been thinking about not two minutes earlier gently untangled the child’s claws from your hair and picked him up into his arms to settle him down.

“You’re too young to be pulling girls hair yet, _ad’ika._ ” You heard him chide in that low baritone as he moved further into the hold towards the child’s hover-pram. It took every ounce of self-control not to let your jaw hit the ground. You barely succeeded.

Unfortunately, you didn’t succeed in stopping your thighs from shifting, subconsciously rubbing them together to relieve the uncomfortably need that settled there, quickly escaping to your mat under the pretense of needing to untangle your hair from the child’s ministrations.

***

Then there were the numerous times you had to get by each other, to get down the ladder to the hold, or to leave the ship, or even just to get into the cockpit. Anywhere that involved you both being in the same space at the same time resulted in the Mandalorian brushing against you accidentally as you crossed paths. Like you said before, Mando was large, and the _Razor Crest_ was not.

One fateful encounter had yet to leave your mind.

You had been frantically looking for the child for nearly half an hour after breaking your second cardinal rule:

Do not take your eyes off the child.

Well, you did. And you were – once again – contemplating the pros and cons of throwing yourself into a sarlacc pit over facing the wrath of the Mandalorian if you didn’t find the sneaky little bogwing he called a son.

You linked your hands behind your neck as you released a long breath to try and calm your rapidly increasing panic. He wasn’t in his hover-pram (though his metal ball was there so surely, he couldn’t have gone far?), he wasn’t in the crab carapace (it sat cold and empty apart from the few errant credits Mando had tossed into it the day before). He wasn’t in the refresher and he wasn’t in the cooling chamber. He wasn’t hiding under the blanket you used for a pillow and he wasn’t playing in the carbonite chamber. You had even taken a panel or two from the side of the ship to see if he had gotten into the electricals, but they too were missing a little green terror.

“He can’t have gone far…” you whispered to yourself, your eyes scanning every single area of the hold carefully, looking for any movement or flash of green that might tell you where your charge had escaped to.

Your eyes landed on the rarely open hydraulic pocket door beside the refresher at the front of the ship, to the bunk where you knew the Mandalorian slept whenever he got the chance to.

What were the odds that things would work out in your favor, that the child wouldn’t be in Mando’s private quarters? That you could quietly continue your search elsewhere on the ship because underneath it all, the child knew there was nothing interesting in _there_?

The odds? Fucking zero.

Closing your eyes as you dropped your head back on your shoulders, you dragged your hands over your face,

“Why me?” you groaned into your hands, feeling infinitely sorry for yourself before you dropped your hands and stared at the open hydraulic durasteel door in distrust, as if it were going to alert Mando of your trespassing for even pondering the idea.

 _It’s just a room._ The lovely, logical part of your brain said, soothing your nerves before the treacherous, licentious part finished the sentence:

_It’s just a room where the Mandalorian sleeps…_

_It’s just a room where the Mandalorian removes his armor…_

_It’s just a room where the Mandalorian---_

You curtailed the rapid descent your thoughts were plummeting towards and took three confident steps towards the room to prove to yourself that you were unfazed. You faltered on step four, but as your foot landed on the metal flooring, you were practically in front of the room already. So, you glanced in with a slight arch of your neck, leaning to the right.

This was the only place on the _Razor Crest_ you hadn’t seen fully. Mando never locked it, but you tried to respect what privacy he did have by avoiding it. You understood that everyone had their space; a single area that was theirs to completely unwind in, even momentarily. You understood the significance of a place like that and invading Mando’s made you feel guilty.

The room itself was clinical in its simplicity. Your eyes roved over the bunk to see if the child was there. You took another step in so you could lean down to see if he was down the side of the bunk, where several metal shelves sat empty apart from a single blaster and a piece of durasteel armor that looked suspiciously like Mando’s old vambrace. He must put his armor there whenever he takes it off. You couldn’t think of another reason for there to be so much wasted space in the room otherwise.

“Psst, kid. Are you in here?” You hissed, not wanting to tempt fate and draw the Mandalorian’s attention if he heard you.

As it happened, the odds that you had put at zero for yourself might as well have been negative infinity, because the response you received was a filtered throat being cleared that had you spinning in place to see Mando watching you with his head tilted and a thumb hoked in his utility belt as he leaned against the wall casually.

And there was the child – proud as the tooka who caught the titterling – sitting in one strong arm, watching you with curious eyes as you stood back up, heat rising to your face as you floundered.

“I---”

“Found him.”

Mando saved you from what was no doubt going to be a terribly awkward attempt at an explanation as to why you were snooping in his bunk, so you merely offered him a sheepish smile when he didn’t question you. You held out your hands when the green monster stretched his own short arms out to you.

Mando pushed himself off the wall and took a step closer to hand the child over and his body ate up the space around you.

It was surreal and slightly unnerving, the way his body seemed to dwarf any space he walked into, particularly this small area in front of his bunk. The breadth of his shoulders blocked the light behind him, and you were ensnared by the faint memory of their strength from realigning his arm after the Houk Incident. You mind was suddenly barraged with sinful images of anchoring your nails into those shoulders, or the sight of your thighs thrown over them as he---

“Can’t take your eyes off him for even a minute.” You laughed to cover your runaway thoughts, honestly you needed to get laid the next planet you landed on, fingers stroking absentmindedly over a large ear while the unpainted helmet stayed trained on you before nodding slowly.

“He gets into more trouble than you do.” He rumbled, the faint lilt of a tease making you instantly narrow your eyes, secretly thankful for the more familiar territory.

“That’s rich, coming from the guy who ended up wanted by not only the New Republic, but the Empire and Bounty Hunters Guild as well.”

He scoffed as he rolled his shoulders back and crossed his arms, a clear rebuttal he decided didn’t warrant a verbal response, but it made you smile slyly in response, eager to keep the upper hand as you moved to get by him.

“You’re quite impressive, you know?” You purred as you passed him, the warrior not conceding an inch of space to let you get by him more easily, his body remaining an impassive mountain in front of you.

“Yeah?” His voice – husky even when filtered – dripped with a curiosity he tried to mask with arrogance as he tipped his head back to look down at you from his greater height while your front brushed against his lightly. You could practically hear the smirk behind his helmet in that one word.

You smiled sweetly at him and – for the first time – touched him for reasons other than medical as your patted the beskar on his chest twice,

“Mhm…” you hummed slowly, squeezing past him finally even as he turned slightly to keep his eyes on you, eyes that were scorching your body despite your inability to see them,

“You single-handedly united the galaxy in getting all three of them to agree that you’re a menace.”

Your saccharine smile grew at the indignant noise that left the warrior in response, the sound so boorish and organic coming from a man who could at times seem as emotionless as the droids he despised. It was a human sound, and your heart thrilled at it, the sensation settling between your legs as you wondered what other human sounds the Mandalorian could produce as you escaped back up the ladder to the cockpit before he could respond. It stroked a primal part of your ego to have been the one to draw out a sound, even one of derision, from him.

You thought about that sound for longer than you cared to admit, one of the few others you had added to the growing catalogue of memories you had accumulated over your short time on the _Razor Crest_. Each memory was capable of tormenting you to the point of arousal while you stubbornly refused to give in to your body’s need for release over thoughts of him.

You might have broken your second cardinal rule of ‘do not take your eyes off the child’ but you were steadfast in sticking to your first cardinal rule:

Do not cross that line with the Mandalorian.

***

You might have been able to abide by that rule if all you had to worry about was the limited content you had to fantasize about. The way he moved, his voice, those glimpses of the human underneath the metal when he spoke in that growling language whenever he was frustrated, or the occasional groan from a stiff neck after too long in the pilot’s chair. The faint memory of the tanned skin you had seen when treating that poisoned stab wound over three years ago. You could deal with all of those. They were ambiguous and vague.

Vague enough that when you did succumb to your own pleasure and give yourself the release you craved night after night while biting your lip to contain even the smallest sounds escaping, you could fool yourself into thinking that it was any nameless, faceless man and not the Mandalorian you travelled with.

That changed the day you were exposed to the sheer strength and power of the Mandalorian first-hand as he wrestled a quarry into the ship after a hunt. The base, primordial desire for physical strength used for the purpose of provision and protection was stoked inside of you.

Mando had shown up with a live quarry, a Trandoshan who – once on the ship – had made one last desperate effort to escape, using the Mandalorian’s distraction as you came out of the refresher to break the binders with the brutal strength Trandoshan’s were known for and lunge right at you. Whether it was to kill you or to use you as leverage for Mando to release him, you never found out.

You had managed one startled step back before the Trandoshan was tackled to the ground in front of you. Mando’s size belied his speed and he quickly had a knee pressed into the quarry’s back, a hand pressing down on the Trandoshan’s neck to keep him in place while he used his free hand to try and restrain him once again.

The image of Mando’s body, humming from the thrill of a fight and the testosterone that rolled off of him because of it, seared itself into your mind. How the quarry could hardly move under the strength of his knee pressed down on his back. How – even under all that armor – you could practically see his muscles ripple and strain taut as he kept the quarry subdued enough to attach a new set of binders.

It was primal.

And it was your undoing.

As you let your fingers roam down beneath your sleep shorts that night to find yourself already soaked, you didn’t even try to stop the memory of Mando man-handling the quarry from filling your thoughts. You didn’t stop the memory from morphing into something else as you imagined yourself underneath him instead. Imagined the Mandalorian using that strength on you for an entirely different reason as you easily sunk two fingers inside your twitching cunt, desperate to be filled by something more than what you could give yourself.

You imagined his hand pressing between your shoulder blades to keep you down, to keep you submissive and could almost hear his voice growling in your ear while you desperately tried to replace the sensation of your own fingers inside you with his. Your other hand traced down your overheated body to circle your clit lightly. Your hips bucked, your body already strung too tight as a whimper slipped past your lips as you imagined he would no doubt leave you wanting more, removing his fingers to replace them with the blunt head of his cock. Just the thought of him pushing into you was enough to send you over the edge, biting down on your lip hard enough that you tasted a tang of copper from where your teeth broke the skin while your orgasm washed over you. You were left panting in the pitch-black hold of the _Razor Crest_ wondering how long you could handle your attraction to the Mandalorian before it drove you crazy.

***

But it wasn’t until a month later, three months since Mynock, when Mando’s penchant for colorful injuries proved to be the straw that broke the bantha’s back.

You had landed on Scipio a week ago.

The frigid atmosphere of the planet was only made worse by the fact that the majority of structures in its capital city sat at a high altitude to escape the snowstorms that could leave entire ships buried in a matter of hours.

It was the first Guild job the Mandalorian had taken in a long time, but it offered a good bounty. From the short answers you had managed to pry from the stoic warrior as you entered Scipio’s atmosphere, he was a money launderer. A disgraced member of the Banking Clan back in the day before he found spice and flesh trafficking to be a more lucrative venture.

The guy was a genius when it came to cleaning dirty credits, funneling them into dummy accounts and businesses, directly influencing the rise in power of several top tier warlords of the fallen Empire. You had thought to question why it was so easy for former Imperials and their supporters to gain power but then you answered your own question. Credits. Credits could buy you anything; buy your survival, buy loyalty, and even buy freedom.

The Mandalorian didn’t seem too concerned about the quarry himself, rather the security detail he might have around him. This type of guy would rather pay someone to die for them instead of picking up a blaster themselves.

The spaceport where you landed doubled as a motel, equipped to stand the sub-zero temperatures and for people like yourself and the child, who would usually remain on the ship, provided somewhere safe to sleep for the duration of your stay. Mando had been frustrating as he explained again about keeping an eye open while in the motel, to double check the locks and not to let the child out of your sight.

It had ended with you snapping at him that you weren’t stupid, weeks of frustration catching up on you.

You had effectively shut him up though, and after a few tense moments he reached out to stroke the tip of the child’s ear gently,

“I won’t be long.” His voice was measured in its control to bite his tongue on a sharp retort, so you only nodded once in confirmation.

You regretted your short temper the moment you had snapped at him. You knew he kept his worry over the child to himself but sometimes he tended to hover, particularly when you weren’t on the _Razor Crest._ But having once again woken that morning to slippery thighs and the lingering image of a blurred silhouette scraping his teeth down your neck, you were feeling a bit high-strung.

So you had lashed out in your irritation, and a week after he left, you still felt bad about it.

The motel itself surrounded the spaceport. For the first day you had distracted the child and yourself by sitting at the window and pointing out the different ships that landed and took off, the high vantage point of the rooms allowing you to see a good portion of the entire port.

You told the child what each ship was (those that you knew, anyway) and told him which was fastest and what each one was used for and even the ones you knew how to fly (even if that list was miserably short for someone from Pamarthe). You still had your suspicions that the child could understand everything you said to him and so spoke to him as if he did. It did no harm and he seemed to enjoy the attention, babbling on your lap, and pressing his forehead to the window.

The ships had been a distraction for all of a day. Neither of you had warm enough clothing to tackle exploring the outdoors so your exploration was limited to the corridors of the motel and the extended sheltered area of the spaceport. The freezing chill still managed to permeate the vast port and you soon found yourselves back in the room for the next few days.

When the commlink Mando had given you crackled on your wrist, you nearly wept with happiness that you might soon be getting off this planet. You would take a week in hyperspace over the prison you felt you had been in within the four walls of the motel room. There were only so many conditions, symptoms, and treatments you could document on your datapad before you started losing the will to live.

“We take off in twenty.”

The commlink warped the unmistakable voice of the Mandalorian, probably due to the raging storm outside affecting the connection but you didn’t care. You guys were leaving, and you wouldn’t be sorry to see the back of Scipio.

Packing up the few items you had brought with you for the child, you placed him back in his hover-pram and closed it around him to protect him from the cold. Pressing another button on the commlink, it began following you as you started making your way down to where the _Razor Crest_ was docked. The few moments you had to spend in the freezing blizzard to get onto the ship felt like a life age, the snow and wind biting into your skin beneath your clothing and almost burning with how cold it felt.

You turned towards the open ramp of the _Razor Crest,_ desperately wanting to close it but you knew the Mandalorian had been out in that weather far longer than you had, and the quicker he got in, the better.

Luckily, you didn’t have to wait long as a few minutes later, the hazy blur in the blizzard sharpened to reveal the beskar clad warrior with a limp figure over his shoulder. Your eyes raked over him, narrowing at the slightly tremble in his left leg as he threw down the prone body none too gently on the floor of the hold. He reached to his right to press one of the manual controls to lift the ramp and finally shield you all from the snow before he reached down to grab the human man by the collar of his shirt and dragged him into the carbonite chamber.

He hadn’t said a word to you but then again, that wasn’t out of the ordinary. He preferred silence and you were used to it.

Instead, you took a few liberties and climbed up to the cockpit to initiate take off procedures. The _Crest_ was old, bless her, but after a moment or two you managed to get her up in the air and out of atmosphere. Once you were able, you activated the autopilot. You were still at cruising altitude and would only be able to enter hyperspace once you were a suitable distance away from the planet.

Mando hadn’t come up when you had taken off and you noticed his absence. It wasn’t like him to remain down below so, with a moment’s hesitation, you returned back down the ladder to find him sitting on one of the large crates with his head back against the wall.

Your eyes immediately focused, mind sharpening as you assessed him from a few feet away. Breathing was normal if a bit heavy, nothing bent at a wrong angle or limbs missing.

You let your eyes drop to the leg you saw tremble slightly. The flight suit Mando wore under his armor, especially the bottoms, were soaked through so you couldn’t tell if the darkened stains on his thigh were melted snow or blood.

“No.”

Your eyes snapped up to his helmet which had turned slightly once you caught his attention.

“No?” You questioned, a frown settling over your eyes as he sat up with a grunt.

“I don’t need you patching up ever scratch and bruise.” He snapped.

Oh, he was cranky. That meant he was in pain.

It was true that Mando had flatly refused any help if he ever came back bruised and sore and for the most part, he probably didn’t need any medical attention. Half the time you didn’t even know because he simply dealt with it himself wordlessly. He had lived this life long enough without you, he knew how to handle himself. Most of the time. Your trained eyes were able to spot a mile away what he could deal with himself and what needed more practiced hands. If he was acting like a cantankerous reek again, then you knew it was time to step in.

You scoffed and took the few steps towards him, completely professional as you dropped to your knees in front of him. You didn’t miss the strangled noise the modulator picked up from behind the helmet, but you didn’t have time to worry about how you might look kneeling in front of his open legs.

All you were focused on, was the shredded duraweave near his knee, dried blood crusting along the flesh of his inner thigh just shy of the beskar plate sitting over his left thigh. You clicked your tongue and sent him a withering look,

“Seriously?”

A growl reverberated from his chest, a string of that foreign language leaving him before he looked away. He looked petulant.

“In Basic if you don’t mind.” You asked sarcastically, eyes already back on the wound underneath the torn duraweave. Your fingers picked a shredded edge of the duraweave to get a better look. You were reminded instantly of the wound he received from the poison laced dagger with you first met him, but you were relieved to note that this wound seemed clean of venom.

That was about all that was clean about it though, because unlike the single laceration of the dagger wound, his thigh had a semi-circle of shredded puncture wounds where something had obviously sunk into his flesh and _shook its head._

“Fucking nerfherders, what _bit_ you?” You turned your eyes back up to him, startled by the size given that the single row indicated only one side of the jaw met his flesh. You worried momentarily if the back of his thigh carried similar wounds where whatever it was bit down but you would deal with this first.

“Whitefang.” He bit out, the frustration in his tone evident but you had grown accustomed to him acting like this whenever he was hurt.

You had gotten to your feet again, turning away to your small area where you could rifle through the medipack you had built for such occasions. You almost dropped the bacta and saline when you turned back to him.

“A whitefang? How in Malachor did you---”

“He didn’t only have mercenaries guarding him.” Mando spat, groaning when the anger in his voice caused his muscles to tense and the obvious pain that followed. You shook your head and knelt back down, sitting on your heels as you peeled back the shredded edges of the duraweave, stopping only when a gloved hand wrapped around your wrist in warning. Your eyes flickered up to the expressionless T-visor, a sigh leaving you as you looked back down.

“I’m only pushing it back as far as the wound goes. I won’t see any more of you than it takes to treat your bite.”

You tried a different approach to your usual _Mando Method._ Negotiation as opposed to strong-arming him. You didn’t try to remove your wrist from his grip, despite how tight it was but your patience seemed to work because with a steady exhale, his grip loosened and released you. You nodded once,

“There, that wasn’t so hard?”

Mando simply leaned his head back heavily and looked up towards the ceiling, his hands resting back on the crate behind him and leaving you to your work.

You turned back to his thigh now that the hard part was over, truly he was a menace when it came to looking after himself. You tutted to yourself while you cleaned the caked, dried blood from around the puncture wounds with clean gauze soaked in an antiseptic solution and assessed their depth as you did so. There were seven punctures in all, the two canine fangs being the largest and deepest, so you focused your attention on them first.

While the Mandalorian hadn’t said a word despite the sting the antiseptic no doubt caused, he let out a soft exhale when you cleaned them out with saline water to flush out any dirt that might have entered the open wounds. You bit down on your lip to hide the slight smile, he seemed to enjoy that part last time too. Now that you were sure he wasn’t in any immediate danger; you allowed your eyes to travel down the length of his body on their way back to his thigh.

You covered the hitch in your breath with a small cough when your eyes passed over the prominent bulge that was nearly at eye level; he was hard. Your mouth instantly went dry as you turned back to his thigh with a bit too much force, a heavy tension settling in the air that was making it hard to focus. 

So, you tried to lighten the mood when he sighed again softly at the cool liquid on his heated skin.

“Careful Mando, or else I’ll start to think you enjoy getting injured.”

You had quickly moved on to threading the dissolvable medical thread through a wicked sharp curved needle and began to layer tight, neat stitches inside the two deepest wounds, anything to distract your hands and eyes from straying somewhere they were wholly unwelcome.

The needle moved easily through his flesh, the thread laced with bacta, one of the greatest creations to come from the last five years of medical research which allowed the healing qualities in bacta to penetrate the body better, using the physical thread to hold the flesh together while it knitted everything back together quicker than the body would be able to by itself.

The Mandalorian hadn’t moved since you began, but you felt the telling warmth on the top of your head where his eyes had settled, watching you sit between his legs and once again, soothing his pain. You hadn’t expected an answer given his mood, so when he did reply, you nearly dropped the needle you were carefully putting away for cleaning later.

“In my line of work, you learn to like a little pain.” His voice sounded thicker, a dark undercurrent to the usual rasp and it made your cunt clench at the veiled insinuation. He must have known you could see, right? He hadn’t made any move to hide his obvious arousal, but then maybe he felt that to draw attention to it would be to acknowledge it.

You smoothed a large bactapad over the wounds, the smaller punctures not deep enough to warrant stiches and satisfied there were no other wounds on his thigh. You used the action to buy yourself some time as you ran your tongue over your bottom lip, desperately trying to get some moisture back as your mind ran wild with the possibilities that single sentence meant about the Mandalorian.

When you had done all you could do, you bit the bullet and looked up at him again. His head was tilted down, not hiding the fact that he was watching you as you worked, and you just knew your underwear was ruined from the image that lay before you. The Mandalorian leaning back with his legs spread and watching you like the hunter he was.

“I’m sure there are other ways you can enjoy that without getting you leg bitten off.” The words that left your mouth were smoother and said with a confidence that made you want to pat yourself on the back. You packed up the medipack and stood up, keeping your eyes on his visor so they wouldn’t be tempted to stray down to the bulge that had yet to disappear.

“No strenuous exercise until they’re healed.” You ordered, your tone allowing for no argument as you turned to put the medipack away, thankful that he couldn’t see the flush on your cheeks when you started moving towards the galley to prepare something to eat for the child and be away from this suddenly stifling situation.

Mando seemed content to remain where he was for a few moments longer before he stood to test his leg on his full weight. You staunchly kept your back to him under the guise of heating a ration pack on the nanowave stove, but you could feel him brush past you on his way to the cockpit.

“Pity.” He dropped the word on your lap without stalling his movements as he passed you, his voice still thick and laced with a sinful darkness before his presence vanished entirely up the ladder, albeit a bit slower and into the cockpit so he could get you all into hyperspace.

When you heard the tell-tale hiss of the cockpit door closing, you braced your hands on the edge of the galley counter, a shaky breath leaving you.

_What the ever-loving fuck what that?_

***

A few hours later, and you were in the refresher, the hiss of the shower the only security that your moans were smothered as your fingers played with your clit, expertly circling it before swiping over the sensitive bundles lightly. Your head fell back, the water soaking your heated skin and running down your body the same way you imagined his hands might, how his tongue might follow that same path.

Your eyes closed on a whimper as you slid a finger inside of yourself, you couldn’t find it in yourself to be embarrassed at how easily it slid in, your arousal providing the perfect lubrication.

You still hadn’t been able to unwind from the tightly strung ball of tension the Mandalorian had left you in hours before and despite your better judgement, had locked yourself in the refresher seeking even an ounce of relief. You should have been ashamed, getting off to the memory of a man who – while being someone you already accepted your attraction to – was a patient in that moment.

It didn’t matter that he seemed just as aroused, that he stoked a desire deep inside you with his words. You didn’t even know his name and yet, the physical attraction you felt for a man whose body you had seen only slivers of, was unlike anything you’d felt for anyone you had been with before. He had you soaked with a few choice words, a tilt of his helmet and his legs spread arrogantly as if he hadn’t just been bitten by a whitefang.

You moaned quietly as you imagined yourself kneeling between those thighs again, but this time not to treat an injury but to satisfy a different sort of ache. You thought about the noises he might make if you took his cock into your mouth; if he would try to control your pace and how much of him you took. You added another finger as you wondered if he would finish in your mouth, or if he was someone who wanted to finish deep inside your cunt instead. If he would pull you up from your position between his legs so he could sink into you and fuck you until he finished.

You could feel your orgasm cresting, your fingers drenched with your arousal and a final forbidden fantasy of what he must look like when he came – what expression would paint the face you would never know as he spilled inside you – was what had your orgasm crashing over you like a tidal wave.

You couldn’t muffle your cry at its intensity, nor could you control the moan spilling from your lips despite swearing you would never say it, never acknowledge outside your own mind that you wanted him.

But you couldn’t help yourself, and it changed everything.

“ _Mando…_ ”

***

He was right the first time.

He should have fucking listened to his instincts when they told him you were dangerous on Klatooine.

He should have known when that lick of desire danced across his body the night he first met you.

He should have known when the blush he caused to rise on your cheeks made his chest swell with masculine pride.

He should have known when he hesitated every time he went to ask you what planet you wanted him to bring you to.

And he should have damn well known when he had to stop himself from fucking you the moment you knelt between his legs to treat his bite.

But he hadn’t listened and now he was stood frozen on his way to his bunk, the sound of his name laced with desire as it rolled off your tongue on the other side of the refresher’s door rooting him to the spot.

He felt himself get painfully hard under his armour again.

He had felt edged all day after trying – and failing – to calm himself down in the cockpit after you had finished with him. He recited his Creed in his head over and over until the memory of you looking up at him with those expressive, intelligent eyes had him hard again almost instantly.

Din felt his lips curl into a snarl at the sound of you moaning his name, at the torture you had unwittingly inflicted on him now that he knew what you sounded like in the throes of pleasure. It would be so easy, so easy to just pull the door open and give you a real reason to moan his name.

He clenched his hand to his side where it itched to open the door, _it would be so easy…_

He shook his head, trying to shake the insidious thoughts of giving in to the attraction that had skyrocketed since you began travelling with him.

A shift of his weight sent a twinge of pain through his thigh and that grounded him.

No, not tonight.

He continued on his path to his bunk before he had been interrupted, locking the hydraulic door behind him before he removed his helmet and ran a hand down his face.

Not tonight.

He removed each part of his armor, setting it down on the shelves beside the bunk, fingers ghosting over the bactapad that still clung to his thigh, the whispered memory of feeling your fingers on his bare skin again causing his cock to twitch beneath his flight suit before he removed that as well.

Not tonight.

He lay back heavily on his bunk, muscles and joints exhausted from the arduous week on an ice planet. He let his eyes roll closed when his hand wrapped around the hard shaft of his cock where it lay heavy against his stomach, lips parting on an exhale. The memory of his name on your lips filled his head as he swiped his thumb across the head of his cock to spread the pre-cum already leaking from the tip and hissed at the sensitivity.

 _Not tonight_ , he thought as his grip tightened as he stroked himself towards a quick release, but one day soon he would make you pay for the torment you inflicted on him today.

He came with a low groan, your voice in his head chiding him once more about no strenuous exercise and he smirked in the darkness at the memory, fatigue making his eyelids heavy.

_Soon._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some liberties I have taken with Star Wars Canon:
> 
> \- Pantran whitefangs (a species of big cat) are native only to Hoth, and are notorious for being impossible to domesticate and are constantly hunting. Anyone who tries, usually ends up dead. For the purposes of Stitches, it didn't seem likely that a money launderer would hide on Hoth. It's a desolate planet with a population that "would just about fill a cruiser". Scipio was at one point, the centre of the Banking Clan during the Galactic Republic and was such an important location that both the Republic and Separatists each sent ambassadors to ensure there was no corruption there. It has a larger population and more cities, somewhere I can justify a money lauderer hiding out in. This is why I transplanted Whitefangs to a different planet though I have made sure that it was an equally frozen one! 
> 
> \- Bacta usually removes the need for literal stitches as we know in real life, but I theorized that, while bacta is a perfect healer given time; in triage and emergency care, going back to basics sometimes helps. That's why I tried to combine the idea of bacta thread, something that would physically hold a wound together and prevent blood loss while the bacta worked in the interim.
> 
> \- The generic "bending the Creed but not breaking it" spiel about reader seeing Din's body so long as it's not his face.
> 
> djarinsbeskar.tumblr.com


End file.
